George C. Page (1901–2000) was an American

real estate developer Real estate development, or property development, is a business process, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of developed land or parcels to others. R ...

, shipper,

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

, and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

; he is best known as the namesake of the

Page Museum La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...

at the

La Brea Tar Pits La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; ''brea'' in Spanish) has seeped up from the gro ...

Los Angeles, California Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

Early life

Page was born in

Fremont, Nebraska Fremont is a city and county seat of Dodge County in the eastern portion of the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. The population was 27,141 at the 2020 census. Fremont is the home of Midland University. History From the 1830 ...

. He lost his father at age five; Page and his brothers were raised by their mother as farmboys. When Page left for

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 ...

at the age of 16, a goal he set four years earlier after tasting his first orange, the teenager had only $2.30 in his pocket. (Page later recalled, "I was so awed by the beauty of that piece of fruit that I said, 'I hope someday I can live where that came from.'")

Founding of Mission Pak

Page worked as a busboy (which he initially believed meant steering a

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a road vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van. It is most commonly used in public transport, but is also in use for cha ...

) and a

soda jerk Soda jerk (or soda jerker) is an American term used to refer to a person — typically a young man — who would operate the soda fountain in a pharmacy (shop), drugstore, preparing and serving carbonated drink, soda drinks and ice cream sodas. T ...

until he had earned $1000. With this capital, in 1917, he bought a vacant store and founded a distribution company, Mission Pak, which shipped California fruits such as

oranges An orange is a fruit of various citrus species in the family Rutaceae (see list of plants known as orange); it primarily refers to ''Citrus'' × ''sinensis'', which is also called sweet orange, to distinguish it from the related ''Citrus × ...

as holiday gifts to cold-weather customers. The idea came to Page as he boxed oranges home to his mother and brother one year earlier: 37 residents at his boardinghouse had asked if he would do them the same courtesy; the company proved enormously successful. (The Mission Pak jingle is still familiar to many older Angelenos: "Say the Magic words, say Mission Pak and it's on its merry way! No gift so bright, so gay, so right, give the Mission Pak magic way!") Mr. Page was interviewed for

Studs Terkel Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American writer, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for '' The Good War'' and is best remembered for his oral his ...

's book, ''

The Good War ''"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II'' (1984) is an oral history of World War II compiled by Studs Terkel. The work received the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. ''"The Good War"'' consists of a series of interviews wi ...

'', about his experiences as an entrepreneur and real estate developer during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. At the time of Page's death, the president of the

Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is the largest natural and historical museum in the western United States. Its collections include nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts and cover 4.5 billion years of history. This large coll ...

observed, "The story of George C. Page embodies the American dream. His like will not come our way again."

Entrepreneur

Capitalizing on his shipping company's success, Page founded a sports-car manufacturing plant. After selling Mission Pak in 1946, Page moved into real estate development; he built industrial and commercial parks, and leased space to the defense and aerospace industries and the federal government. Having begun as a packager, Page thought this brought an edge to real estate; Page was always attentive to the value good landscaping could add to a project.

Philanthropist

Page financed the construction of buildings at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (the George C. Page Building), at Loyola Marymount University (

George C. Page Stadium George C. Page Stadium is a baseball venue in Los Angeles, California, USA. It is home to the Loyola Marymount Lions baseball team of the NCAA's Division I West Coast Conference. Opened in 1983, it has a capacity of 1,200 spectators. The stad ...

), and in the district of Hawthorne, Los Angeles (the George C. Page Youth Center), along with arts programs at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

and buildings and scholarships at

Pepperdine University Pepperdine University () is a private research university affiliated with the Churches of Christ with its main campus in Los Angeles County, California. Pepperdine's main campus consists of 830 acres (340 ha) overlooking the Pacific Ocean and t ...

in Malibu. The Pepperdine University Law School dormitories are named in his honor.

The La Brea Tar Pits

Page had begun visiting the

while in his late teens; it troubled him that to move from pits to the disinterred fossilized remains required a seven-mile (11.3 km) trip to the Natural History museum. A half-century later, the museum that bears his name was opened to the public in April 1977. Page had devoted great care into each element of the museum—attractive fossil presentation, so it would not simply be "bones, bones, bones"; testing the most comfortable underfoot surface—carpet, not marble—and limiting the museum to exhibits that could be easily covered in about an hour. Among the site's visitors, five million in its first decade, were professional curators interested to see what Page, as an amateur, had put together. "The thing that made me feel awfully good," Page told the ''Los Angeles Times ''in 1982, " was that they said, 'George Page, we have never been in a museum with things displayed so well.'" Page described The George C. Page Museum as a kind of living bouquet he had presented to the city: "This is so living, so immediate. It's like giving flowers that I can smell while I'm still here."Oliver, the ''Los Angeles Times'', ibid.

References

External links

The Page Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Page, George C. American real estate businesspeople People from Fremont, Nebraska 1901 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople