An early Long Beach veterinarian saw dogs and cats—and horses—at this Rose Park house

PHOTO by ROSHEILA ROBLES

A newspaperman in John Ford’s 1962 Western The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—a completely unrelated source—delivers what should be the last word on the old Doc Carter place. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says the publisher, played by late actor Carlton Young.

And so, the story of what still could be Long Beach’s first veterinary hospital begins with a Dr. Carter who worked from his home, an ornate Craftsman in the Rose Park Historic District. Except for this: Contrary to popular belief, vintage phone books and city directories place veterinarians J.A. Bergan, on East First Street, and A.E. Windsor, on Pacific Avenue, in town first, in February 1916.

Doc Carter’s story is nevertheless convincing because we know more of it—and because it’s a good story, relayed by a succession of his house’s former neighbors, tenants and owners who still stop by to recite their chapters. His house—a richly appointed two-bedroom, two-bathroom dwelling with oak and pine flooring, and restored woodwork that includes built-in cabinets with vintage stained glass inserts—almost takes a back seat. Almost.

The phone book finds Doc Carter at home from September 1917 through at least April of 1949, and according to his house’s fourth owner, architect Ken Graham, he shared the space with his sister, her husband and, eventually, their son.

Graham, who spends his days designing everything from private homes to hotels, makes his offices where Doc Carter once treated . . . well, better let him tell it.

“I guess in the old days there was a path that went through here,” Graham says as we stand out front with Brandi, his rescued golden retriever mix. He indicates the house’s southern exposure, now a controlled riot of tropical splendor. “Old Doc Carter brought the Long Beach Fire Department horses through here to tend to them.” Now, it’s his office, painted to match the home in five vintage organic tones.

Opposite the former stable, smaller animals—dogs and cats—convalesced in what’s now the garage. And if old Doc Carter (call Long Beach 8-9756, says the phone book) had just been your simple country doctor, perhaps his story would have ended some time in the 1940s or 1950s, when he reportedly moved on. But he wasn’t.

For whatever reasons—because he worked from a nice house in a residential neighborhood for so many years or just because he was a compelling individual—former acquaintances remembered him well. The late Pete Kaufmann, a lady who still lived across the street when Graham bought the house in 1999, had been there since 1939. She remembered Doc Carter vividly. And recently, Graham says, an elderly man stopped by who’d lived on the block in 1933, the year of the great Long Beach earthquake.

“He said his sister got cut up really bad in the earthquake, and they brought her to Doc Carter to sew her up,” Graham says. As we talk, he and fellow architect Alex Gray tell Brandi that her favorite squirrel is right there, up a tree.

“She has more friends than I do, pretty much. They have dog parties over here,” says Graham, who wanted to be a vet when he was younger. You can’t help but think that Doc Carter would appreciate his house’s current owner and pets (there’s also Jojo the tortoise). Graham does. He and a former tenant—who rented the place during the 1970s and came back to visit—both say they saw a peaceful sort of apparition. They think it may have been Doc Carter.

“The lady said he was wearing a long coat and a hat,” Graham says. “I thought I saw an image. There was no detail at all. Then, about a month ago, I thought I saw it again, and it brought tears to my eyes.”

It was an unusual experience but, he says, a positive one.

Tags: doc carter, ken graham, Long Beach, rose park, Shelter