Huntington Beach Happenings
by: Chris MacDonald
Published: March 2, 2026
HUNTINGTON BEACH...Huntington Beach Assistant City Clerk Juan Esquivel provided a link to the next Huntington Beach City Council Meeting on Tuesday March 3rd, 2026. Click here:
Here is a link to my article on The Recent Storms we experienced in The Seal Beach Sun News.
Huntington Beach City Historian Jerry Person presents Remember When -
Remembering City Clerk John Henricksen
One of the most important and under paid jobs in Huntington Beach or for that matter, any local city, is that of City Clerk and in their tireless daily duty is to provide, at a moment's notice, any type of municipal record which a current city council person may require.
It has been my great pleasure to know a few of these tireless-working individuals over the years for Huntington Beach and to see in their hands how the city government is able to run so smooth. This week we'll be going back to another of Huntington Beach's city clerks and remember the life of one of these important city clerks and to remember the life of John Henricksen.
It was in a far away city of Rorvik in Norway that Henricksen was born in 1899 and this tiny infant was given the name of Johan Storm Lund Henricksen, but everyone knew him as simply John.
Henricksen had two brothers and a sister and in 1904 the whole Henricksen family left Norway to settle in Duluth, Minnesota. If any of you have ever been to Duluth in the winter know how similar the climate is to both Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
During this time many Scandinavians were relocating to Minnesota from Norway, Sweden and Denmark in the late 1800s and into the first half of the 1900s including my grandparents. Young John attended school in Duluth and the family as well as most Norwegians there attended the Norwegian Lutheran Church and were confirmed as was John.
In 1918 and still in high school John enlisted in the Navy as America was preparing to go to war and for the next 18 months he would serve in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic.
After World War I ended John returned home to continued his education at the University of Minnesota where he majored in business administration. John was a member of the Duluth Boat Club in 1920 and was a runner-up in the Olympic game trials. He was also a good basketball player and his team, the Luther Athletic Club, won the Minnesota championships for 1920-21.
After John graduated he next went to work in Brazil for the Phoenix Utility Company of New York and while there he took a two year course in advanced public utility accounting and he remained with that company for the next nine years.
During his employment, Henricksen traveled to Cuba, Florida and Brazil and gaining a great deal of knowledge and it was while he was in Cuba in 1924 he found himself in the middle of an uprising. He served as a paymaster, cost and field accountant and company auditor during this time.
In 1929 in a confidential report to the company Henricksen foresaw a revolution in Brazil and even named the date for it in a report. He missed the date though but only 10 days and the amazing part of it was that he had had that information for over a year.
When he left the company John traveled to Northern California where he mined for gold in a placer gold claim.
Two years later he returned to accounting and served as a resident auditor for the Ebasco Service Co. traveling to such states as Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Henricksen spent the next five years in Southern California working for the Austin Company as auditor.
John's sister married a Huntington Beach man, Howard Moring, and while Howard and he were on a bowling trip here, he met Howard's sister Jewell Brown. She was from a pioneer Huntington Beach family and the two fell in love and were married.
In 1947 Henricksen was appointed city clerk and controller for our beautiful beach town of Huntington Beach. Jewell and John ran a trailer park on Adams Avenue and Beach Boulevard and the family lived at 618 E. Quincy (Adams Ave.) in a large two-story home built around 1900 with their son Jon and a stepson Kao Ewing.
Jewell ran a food concession north of the Huntington Beach Pier near Fifth Street called Julie's Restaurant.
Henricksen was a member of the Masonic Lodge, a Shriner, a Rotarian and a member of the Toastmasters.
When John retired as city clerk in 1960 he handed the reins over to Paul Jones.
As you can see, John led a very active life and throughout that life he managed to play football, basketball, baseball, track, ice hockey, rowing and when time permitted, played a little golf.
John and Jewell are no longer with us today and there are still some residents living who remember John and we can be very proud to have such great city clerks on board to help our city council and in later years some future city clerk will look back and admire the work that today's city clerks have done.