Beer baron Bryan “Whitey” Littlefield used his pipes for giving–and swearing

PHOTO by DANIEL DE BOOM

Memorial services for Bryan “Whitey” Littlefield were yesterday at First Congregational Church downtown, and the beer baron/philanthropist–who died March 7 at 75 of prostate cancer–received a bravura send-off.

The church has two levels and the upstairs stayed relatively empty, but downstairs was standing-room-only: a Who’s Who of official-dom and Entitled Long Beach.

But don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Littlefield, or if this is starting to sound like just another rich man’s obituary. It’s not, and Whitey wasn’t.

He’s a legend in Long Beach giving–credited with starting the Long Beach police officers Widows Trust Fund; helping reinvent the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau; donating countless hours to the Cal State Long Beach jazz radio station KKJZ 88.1 FM, where he spent 14 years on its governing board; and helping birth the CSULB Pyramid.

But by all accounts, Whitey never sounded–or, sometimes, even acted–much different than the men who drove his beer trucks.

His memorial was packed with local potentates. State Senator Alan Lowenthal, County Supervisor Don Knabe, former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, former Fire Chief Robert Leslie, former Police Chief Robert Luman, current Police Chief Anthony Batts, campaign manager Jeff Adler, lobbyist Carl Kemp, Smooth’s Sports Grille owner John Morris (a close friend) and The Cellar’s Vince Jordan were among the few hundred in the pews.

So was Frank Sinatra Jr., whose dad had partnered with Littlefield in ’66 to buy Somerset Distributors, the Anheuser-Busch distributor. They were close enough that Sinatra once played a free show in Long Beach to benefit the Widows Trust Fund.

Hearing about his amazing life and his uniquely profane character made the Life of Whitey sometimes feel like a you-had-to-be-there production. Sinatra, Jr., the penultimate eulogist, was wise enough to say so.

“I’ve sat here with all of you as an outsider, who only came to know Whitey in his later years,” Sinatra Jr. said prefacing his remarks. Then he told a story he was there for: about the day Whitey, who hated the Dodger Stadium kiss-cam, once kissed a guy in the stands who didn’t like him–knowing it would be on the Chavez Ravine Jumbotron.

Born on Christmas Day–the day curmudgeonly comedian W.C. Fields died–Littlefield moved from Salt Lake City with his mother and her brood, to a hardscrabble upbringing on the streets of Los Angeles. The only white kid in a black neighborhood, he embraced the nickname thrust upon him.

It says a lot that before he owned the company, he drove a beer truck. Whitey took a lot before he became manager of Sinatra’s beer distributorship at age 33–but they say he’d been a giver his whole life, with money or just a few choice words.

“One percent of the audience has never heard Whitey cuss, so … if I screw up, it’ll be a ‘Whitey-ism,’ ” said Morris, the services’ emcee, explaining what he’d substitute for one of Whitey’s favorite ’isms: the word “fuck.” (It worked, to considerable applause.) And when that word failed, there were other ways to make the same point.

“Seventeen pictures exist of Whitey Littlefield not giving somebody The Bird,” said Littlefield’s brother, Joe Ferraro, facing the pews.

“He was the only guy who’d call you a fucking asshole and make you feel good about it,” recalled Sacramento plumbing supply salesman Gary Martin, an F.O.W. (Friend of Whitey) from his time here.

“I’m just a regular guy–a sales rep–and John [Morris] introduced us about 20 years ago,” Martin continued, in a telephone interview before driving down to the memorial. “The more I hung out with John, the more I got to know Whitey.” When Martin lost his job in 2001–and had used up almost all his savings–Littlefield invited him to lunch.

“At the end, he hands me this check and I said, ‘I can’t take this,’ ” Martin said. “He says ‘Don’t insult me and don’t be a dickhead. Take the money and get a fucking job.’ Obviously I got a job and paid him the money and we never talked about it again.”

“He was a giver, but he liked being hard-assed about it,” said Leslie, outside the church (Long Beach’s fire chief in the ’70s). “He’d be sarcastic and all that stuff, but he’d still give. I think he wanted to put forth a Frank Sinatra image, and to portray that, you had to be a certain way.”

Or maybe Whitey was just cut on the bias to begin with.

“He parked [his Jaguar] in every red zone in front of every restaurant all over town and nobody ever gave him a ticket,” Adler said. After a trip to watch Formula One in Monaco in 1978, Littlefield added real, live Monaco license plates to his car–still parked in the red.

“Whitey basically said to me, ‘Have I ever come to you and complained about a ticket?’ ” then-Police Chief Robert Luman remembered. “And I said ‘No.’ And the next thing I know, it’s all over the Press-Telegram.

So I called Whitey and I said, ‘It would really help me if you would take those plates off your car.’ And he said, ‘You know, Bob, nobody ever asked me nicely before.’ ”

A couple weeks later, Luman got a package in the mail–one of Littlefield’s Monaco license plates, framed and stamped, from His Royal Highness Prince Rainier of Monaco–and His Second Royal Highness, Whitey De Long Beach.

Luman brought a brown paper shopping bag to Whitey’s memorial service. The framed plate was in it. And when Morris told the story, Luman stood and held up Whitey’s plate.

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