Charles Calhoun Dail (January 11, 1909 – July 13, 1968) was an American Democratic

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

from

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. He served three terms on the

San Diego City Council The San Diego City Council is the legislative branch of government for the city of San Diego, California. The city council was first established in San Diego in 1850. The council uses a strong mayor system with a separately elected mayor who acts ...

and two terms as the 27th

Mayor of San Diego The mayor of the City of San Diego is the official head and chief executive officer of the U.S. city of San Diego, California. The mayor has the duty to enforce and execute the laws enacted by the San Diego City Council, the legislative branch. ...

Biography

Charles Calhoun Dail was born on January 11, 1909, in

Kansas City, Kansas Kansas City, abbreviated as "KCK", is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas, and the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is an inner suburb of the older and more populous Kansas City, Missouri, after which it is named. As of ...

. His parents were Charles Darwin Dail and Hester Dail, née Cooksey. He married Dorothy Mae Cook on June 28, 1933. Prior to seeking elected office, Dail worked in the insurance business.

City Council and Mayor

Dail was elected to three terms on the San Diego City Council from 1943 to 1955. Later he was twice elected mayor of San Diego, serving between 1955 and 1963. As mayor he promoted the development of the

downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Community Concourse, which includes city hall and city offices as well as a civic auditorium; the project set off a wave of construction of skyscraper offices and hotels and started the revival of the city's downtown, which had been deteriorating. The city complex is now named the Charles C. Dail Community Concourse. He also spearheaded the development of

Mission Bay Park Mission Bay is a human-made saltwater bay located south of the Pacific Beach community of San Diego, California created from approximately of historical wetland, marsh, and saltwater bay habitat. The bay is part of the recreational Mission Bay ...

. Dail helped convince the Regents of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...

to locate a new campus,

University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

, in San Diego; ground was broken for the new campus in 1961. Dail had had

polio Poliomyelitis, commonly shortened to polio, is an infectious disease caused by the poliovirus. Approximately 70% of cases are asymptomatic; mild symptoms which can occur include sore throat and fever; in a proportion of cases more severe s ...

as a child, and in 1963 he convinced

Jonas Salk Jonas Edward Salk (; born Jonas Salk; October 28, 1914June 23, 1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New Y ...

to locate the

Salk Institute for Biological Studies The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U.S. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vacci ...

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

, San Diego. The city donated 27 acres (11 hectares) of city pueblo land as a gift to construct the Institute. Dail was also instrumental in establishing a

sister-city A sister city or a twin town relationship is a form of legal or social agreement between two geographically and politically distinct localities for the purpose of promoting cultural and commercial ties. While there are early examples of inter ...

relationship between San Diego and

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. As a result, the Charles Dail Gate in the Japanese Friendship Garden in Balboa Park bears his name. While Mayor, Dail was indicted by the Grand Jury twice. He was accused of offering to obtain a liquor license for a local bar owner in return for an interest in the business. Dail was ultimately successful in turning back these charges. Dail was also subject to

recall Recall may refer to: * Recall (bugle call), a signal to stop * Recall (information retrieval), a statistical measure * ''ReCALL'' (journal), an academic journal about computer-assisted language learning * Recall (memory) * ''Recall'' (Overwatch ...

effort led by a local organization called the Better Government Association. In their petition, they accused Dail of being unresponsive to the public on issues such as the elimination of parking meters, his advocacy for expanding

Brown Field Municipal Airport Brown Field Municipal Airport is in the Otay Mesa neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States, southeast of Downtown San Diego and named in honor of Commander Melville S. Brown, USN, who was killed in an airplane crash in 1936. Its ma ...

into an international airport, and building new roads through Balboa Park. The recall campaign was ultimately unsuccessful. Dail declined to run for a third term as mayor in 1963, citing personal and business reasons. At the time, Dail's combined twenty years serving as a city council member and mayor was the longest period of elected service in San Diego's history.

Death

On July 13, 1968, Dail suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at his home in San Diego. He died soon after in

Sharp Memorial Hospital Sharp Memorial Hospital is a hospital in San Diego, California, in the United States. Opened in 1955, Sharp Memorial is Sharp HealthCare's largest hospital and the system's only designated Level II trauma center. Located in Serra Mesa, the hosp ...

at the age of 59. He was entombed at Greenwood Memorial Park.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dail, Charles C. Mayors of San Diego 1909 births 1968 deaths 20th-century American politicians