Oral History: Chuck Baumann – March, 2024

Summary:

Chuck Baumann was interviewed by Andree Hurst in March, 2024. He came to Lafayette in 1955 at age 6 when his father relocated the family to this growing community to establish and run a company that built swimming pools. He discusses growing up in the community with great schools and social activities and he worked for his dad from a young age. Two of Chuck’s uncles also ran pool companies, and he worked for them until he founded his own firm in 1977. Soon the Jacuzzi family gave him the opportunity to build the first combination pool and heated spa in Upper Happy Valley. When he eventually retired his son took over the business.

Oral History:

Andree Hurst: Hi, this is Andree Hurst with the Lafayette Historical Society. Excuse the sunglasses, but I just went to the eye doctor. But I’m so pleased today to be doing an oral history with Charles Baumann. And I’m going to be asking some questions, Charles, and you can take it from there. How does that sound?

Charles “Chuck” Baumann: That sounds fine.

AH: You can address me as Chuck, which is what all my friends call me. Now, did I pronounce your last name correctly?

CB: Yes, Baumann. That’s correct. It’s Swiss.

AH: And where and when were you born?

CB: Born in Oakland, California in December 4th, 1949.

AH: And how long have you lived in Lafayette?

CB: We moved to Lafayette in the mid 50s, 55, 56. My dad was told of this new frontier. We lived in East Oakland and his brother drove a bread truck and came through the tunnel every day delivering bread to the local grocery stores. And he says, my gosh, there’s a whole new world on the other side of the tunnel. And back in those days, you didn’t venture through the tunnel very much. It wasn’t like today with all the commute and now the community has grown. And so he says, you know, there’s a lot of these swimming pools that are getting built out in Lafayette. We should go look at it. And so him and my dad and his brother came out to Lafayette and realized that it was the beginning of the new frontier because of baby boomers. The baby boomer family post war was starting to expand. And what Lafayette offered up to families was just this most ideal living area, great weather, wonderful schools, growing community, and an opportunity for whatever the future held. And so my dad took advantage of it was wonderful.

AH: That’s perfect timing, isn’t it?

CB: It was. I mean, I’ve studied this. Over time, because I love history anyhow. And what was it that drove people to want to move into the Contra Costa County. When I was a kid, there was just a few thousand people that lived in Lafayette. There was 4,000 people that lived in Walnut Creek and Concord had 12,000 people. So these were real country towns at the time that were just getting ready to explode as a lot of returning GIs came back from World War II. They settled in the inner Bay Area, and then they started venturing out the government gave them the GI Bill. So they had the opportunity to buy homes at a low interest and builders came out home builders came out to Contra Costa County. All these wonderful orchards and farm areas were ideal to plant houses in. And we saw it. We saw it out in the Diablo Valley area, but more importantly, we saw it in Lafayette. It was this ideal condition.

AH: Sure. Now you were still pretty young in, let’s say 1960 or 19. So you came with your parents and what were their names? And did you all move then to Lafayette at that time?

CB: Yeah, we did. My, my dad, Max Baumann, who has since passed. My mom, Ellie Baumann, who is also passed. We, we came out to Lafayette because of my dad wanting to start a pool company and get into the pool industry. It, it was very Spartan back in those days and to have a small mom and pop business was very typical in the American culture. And so what was happening for our family is it was a family affair. I can recall being very young and my father packing me up every day before I went to school to actually go out on the job sites with them riding around in his truck.

AH: That must have been fun.

CB: You know, it was certainly, there were moments that you said, God, this is so mean for my parents to be doing this. But now I look back over my life and, and I truly started working when I was about five or six years old in the family business. It has given me a tremendous amount of foundation to build my life and career on that a lot of people don’t get that chance today.

AH: Now, I understand you had mentioned to me that something happened in 1966 with somebody driving one of the pool trucks.

CB: But it was, it was a very sad time in my parents career of building this business. My dad had a service company had a retail store right on Mount Diablo Boulevard that sold pool supplies. I worked at that store. And then he went out and built these really nice custom swimming pools. And unfortunately he trusted one of his employees with a company car that lived in Oakland. That particular individual one afternoon got liquored up at the Roundup Saloon there in Lafayette and went ahead and drove home, going through the Oakland tunnel and right at the time, they were building the third bore of the tunnel. There was a lot of disruption on the roadways he gets involved in an accident, put somebody in a chair for the rest of their life, and the attorneys and insurance everybody sued my, my dad and his company and, and we lost everything we went.

AH: Goodness.

CB: The penthouse as I say to the outhouse and my dad had to literally start all over again.

AH: And so then you helped him and you were pretty young what 16 or so.

CB: I was 16 as soon as I got a driver’s license I had a pickup truck. Then I started cleaning swimming pools and I cleaned some of the most notable people in our community because it was just a wealthy group of people that had swimming pools back in those days it was starting to build some momentum that more and more people were building swimming pools but back then the fellow that had called well Coldwell Banker, Mr. Banker I cleaned his pool. The Alioto family had a summer cottage out and Diablo country club I cleaned their pool. The Peterson family that owned Peterson caterpillar tractor that actually owned the Blackhawk ranch that is now a huge development. I cleaned the swimming pool with that property and it taught me some great work ethics that’s important for young people to learn instead of, you know, you don’t have to go to work today and here’s your allowance and don’t do anything for it. I worked very diligently but also helped support my family at that time on my dad lost everything and everything that the family could generate for income. We did. And this was my contribution to it.

AH: So you were going to Acalanes at the time?

CB: Yeah, at the time. I was. I want to say a sophomore at Acalanes. And it was kind of an ironic story I know I had told you about this, but it speaks to the perseverance of the human spirit. And that is, you know, here I am having to work. Every day after school working on the weekends working all summer to help support the family. And I really didn’t do much in so far as grades and accomplishment at Acalanes to the point that in my senior year, the dean of boys Mr. Stevens asked my dad and I to come in and talk about my grades and the fact that I didn’t have enough credits to graduate with and Mr. Stevens was prepared to say Chuck isn’t going to graduate with his class and at that point I probably would have been a dropout in school. As it turns out, Mr. Stevens heard my story I told him my story about working and helping to support the family he looked across the desk at my dad and I with a big smile and he said, wow, that’s perfect that’s that’s work experience. All the credits that you were short because of all the classes that you flunked out because you weren’t attended to school. I’m now going to let you graduate. And so I graduate with my class 1968, which has been a wonderful experience and I’ve been connected to so many of those classmates, which is probably something that wouldn’t have happened had I not graduated.

AH: And so that was right around. Now this Coral Pools.

CB: So Coral Pools which is still in existence. My dad had a pool company called King Neptune Pools right on Mount Diablo across the street and down a little bit where the Jack In The Box is right now. That was my uncle’s pool store Bermuda Pools I worked for him for a short period of time after my dad lost his business. And then I since moved on to Coral Pools, which is my mom’s brother so there were three family members that had three different pool companies in town. At Coral Pools. After graduating from high school, I went in the military for a short period. When I came back, I became partners with my aunt and uncle George and Lily Marcott, which was, I mean, it was, it was a great experience. Here’s a young kid who had all this education and so far as the pool industry. And now I was able to put it into use and become a working partner with my uncle.

AH: Now the little house that you converted into a pool store is that the one that is still there on one still there on Golden Gate Way?

CB: Second Avenue and Golden Gateway. And I remember when my aunt and uncle bought it and he and I went in there with sledgehammers and we started tearing out walls and opening the building up so that we can convert it into a retail store. Still exactly the same as it was back in. What was that 1968, 69. Yeah. Great.

AH: Do the math here and that is, let’s say 1968.

CB: That’s about 54 years.

AH: Wow.

CB: Yeah, crazy.

AH: That’s great.

AH: So, now, is that store is the store still in your ownership?

CB: No, I, I left parted ways with my uncle. I gave him back the shares that he had given me to the company. And I said I wanted to go off on my own and start building custom swimming pools, which was… it was something that really was lacking in the pool industry. There wasn’t anybody that was taking a look at the complete backyard and the recreation of being in the backyard. Up to that point, the only dog in the fight was the swimming pool. The swimming pool builder built the pool. It was a pretty standard design a kidney, rectangle, an oval. And then at that point, he introduced his concrete buddy who put concrete all over everywhere in the backyard and you had a pool and concrete and it was a pretty simplistic design. That never really changed until my generation came along and there’s a handful of us around the country that we still connect to each other, where we have taken the industry to the next level. Whether it’s incorporating the spas into pools, whether it’s elevating portions of it, but it’s become more of an artistic statement. And to the point that people that are building swimming pools today realize how the swimming pool is an important part to the rest of the design, whether it’s a pavilion or patios or landscaping. The projects are far greater than what my dad was building in in the 60s I actually have, which I will give you a couple of pictures that you can post with the article that we’re doing. I actually have an advertisement, 1968, which for my 50th class reunion at Acalanes I helped head that up. One of our classmates said, remember what was going on in the pool industry back in 1968 and here was a swimming pool by a pool builder Lafayette Pools, and he would build a 15 by 30 swimming pool with a pool heater that he was throwing in and they didn’t have to make any payments until the end of the year. That swimming pool was $239500. And I think today, the projects that we build, there isn’t one little piece or component of the pool that is that least expensive.

AH: That’s amazing. So this Lafayette Lafayette Pools.

CB: Yes.

AH: Was that was that your company then?

CB: My dad’s company was King Neptune. My company when I started it in 1979 is called Creative Environments. And this year we’re celebrating 45 years of being in business. My son now runs the company, Nico Baumann, he’s the third generation of our family to be building pools in Lafayette. Currently we have four pools under construction in Lafayette.

AH: Wow, that’s great. Do you think the, so, so you sort of have this, are the pools now still as popular as they once were, or do you find when people move in there’s not as much room to put a pool, so you have to maybe put a smaller pool, how is the industry changing in Lafayette?

CB: That’s a great question Lafayette, right after World War II became kind of the epicenter of the pool industry in Northern California it could be argued that on the peninsula where a lot of wealthy people lived in the Athertons and Woodsides, Portola Valley and so forth. Those two had swimming pools, but Lafayette for the East Bay was that epicenter and there was a lot of things that took place in the Bay Area that helped craft the swimming pools to what they are today. So to first answer your question. Are they more relative or less relative, more desirable, more desirable, less desirable today. The swimming pool industry has gone through a whole series of ups and downs and cycles, depending on economy depending on the quality or lack of quality that pools were built in the 50s and 60s compared to today. And so I feel interesting question that my son posed to me he has a degree in neuroscience he was going to get in the medical field. He realized that he still had eight more years of college and he was ready to get out into the world and make a living. I invited him to come and help me build a few pools, and he asked the same similar kind of question he said dad how sustainable is the swimming pool industry in our community. And of course I answered it with well two generations have already been building pools, and I suspect you’ll be the third generation if you want to join me, which he has. I’m finding because of so many features and elements that are added to a swimming pool today. It has continued making the desirability of having a pool, in my dad’s era the pools were at one dimension that was they, they were flat they didn’t have any raised portions, my dad did a few things to raise up portions of the pool. My generation comes along and most, all of our pools have elevated sections where a spa overflows into the pool, maybe some sheer falls on a raised back wall of the pool. All of these things have added more personality and character, plus the fact that in my dad’s era you ended up with a six-by-six blue tile, a white coping stone and a white plaster today. There’s 50 to 100 different interior finishes, it’s endless on the tile that can be added, and it’s endless on the material for the coping trim around the pool. We were also blessed and I tell the story quite often to people in Lafayette, the very very first therapy spa was actually invented. Now, when I talked to my pool builder friends across the country–I’m associated with a builder group, Carecraft and that group is connected to about 450 other builders like myself across the country–and when I tell them the very first spa was created in my little town of Lafayette, they said how can that be, that doesn’t make sense in little tiny town of Lafayette. And I said there was a family that lived in Lafayette that as soon as I tell you their name, you’re going to have an aha moment and that family is the Jacuzzi family.

AH: Oh my goodness.

CB: So the Jacuzzi was synonymous to a hot therapy pool and when people first started adding these spas to swimming pools they said and I’d like to have a Jacuzzi added to my pool.

AH: Oh yeah.

CB: Very interesting that first spa was up in Upper Happy Valley at the corner of Upper Happy Valley and Canyon. Now there’s a tennis court there but at the time it was a small little pavilion building with an interior mini-swimming pool. We had these hydrotherapy jets that were screwed into the wall that created this Venturi action with air and water mixture giving it the hydrotherapy. It was actually done for the Jacuzzi family that lived at that location.

AH: Yeah, that’s a very interesting story.

CB: On point of history, there was other things that took place. My uncle and I had Coral Pools. We brought the very first spas into the Bay Area, fiberglass spas, and we started selling those to folks out of our Coral Pool store. We started building wood hot tubs and it couldn’t be just a redwood hot tub. It was jar wood and teak and cedar wood and I experimented with all kinds of fun stuff and it was a good time in the early 70s when all this was kind of going on.

AH: I bet it was very exciting. Did you then, when did you move out of your parents’ home and did you stay in Lafayette during all of this time when you were starting your business in 1979?

CB: Yeah, you know, that’s a great question. So after my dad lost his company, we lived on Andreasen Drive, which was at the bottom of Snake Hill, which was right off Olympic, which was a railroad track when I was a kid.

AH: Oh yeah, that’s right.

CB: It calls it the Iron Horse Trail. Well, when I was a kid, the train came through every day.

AH: And did it come right down what’s Olympic right through what the trail is now?

CB: Right now, exactly. So if you were to come from the freeway, which wasn’t then, wasn’t there then when I was a kid, but the railroad tracks came right down Olympic.
Came all the way down to Reliez Station Road, and then it crossed over Reliez Station and continued on, which is now that hiking trail that we all use.

AH: Sure.

CB: So we lived, we lived right there. And when my dad lost his company, we lost the house as well. And we actually moved out to Pleasant Hill, and I was, what was I, about 15 years old. I had already bought my first car. It was a 56 Chevy Bel Air. And back in those days, you know, you could drive around on country roads and nobody policed it up and you couldn’t do that. Well, my dad had lost everything and he figured they’re not going to take anything more. I didn’t want to quit going to Acalanes. So every day I drove from Pleasant Hill without my driver’s license in my 56 Chevy, and I went to school. And about the time I had a driver’s license, then I got a truck and started the pool work. And after graduation from Acalanes, I moved out of the house right away and rented a house down on First Street, just around the corner from the Park Theatre and lived there for a while until I joined the army. And when I came back, eventually, I eventually bought a house over on the, it was in Tice Valley, but it was right on the border of Walnut Creek and Alamo. And I’ve lived in this community over here for the past 50 years.

AH: So, and so you serve the whole, the whole area.

CB: Yeah.

AH: Yeah.

CB: We currently, well, currently my son and I, we used to service the whole Bay Area and building primarily across the bay and Woodside, Atherton or over here in Lafayette, Orinda. Now we go up to Napa and we service some big properties up there and build pools on them and then we build in the East Bay.

AH: Very nice. Let’s go back to some of your memories of being in Lafayette at that age. When you talk about all the pools, were there any little, was there any swimming holes that you remember?

CB: Well, there, there was one that I remember which was Bob Sherman’s Sherman swim or dive, swim and dive school that, of course, on the weekends and the evening times as kids would figure out that we could jump the fence and nobody was there. And not only could you play on his trampoline, but you could jump in the pool, which was heated. So it was, yeah, you did that kind of stuff. And we had Buckeye Ranch at the end of, was it Springhill? I think it was Springhill. And then we’d go out there or, you know, horses was a big part of the community. We had, and I tell this story to people, we had more horses back then in Contra Costa County than any other county in California. Everybody had a big lot. You can see it when you go through Lafayette in certain areas. Now they’ve subdivided it and spun off two or three lots off of the property. But that used to be a big horse paddock and stables and everybody had a horse.

AH: Wow. Did you, did you learn to ride?

CB: I learned to ride. I didn’t have a horse. My older sister had a horse. And then, because I was too busy working, right. And currently my wife has three horses and we’re, we’re big into horses and animals, and oh yeah.

AH: Yeah, that’s great. What were some of your favorite hangouts after school to get a burger or that kind of thing?

CB: You had Chaps at the end of town there, which is across the street from Trader Joe’s. There was a burger joint there and the way that you, you went into Chaps is if you had a hot enough car, you pulled into the parking lot, but then you backed up against what was kind of an inclined area. So you could check out all the talent that was driving in to get a burger, you know, meaning girls and stuff like this, right. So you’d, you’d park in there and you’d, you’d be drinking your soda and having a burger, checking the talent as it came in. That was always a fun thing that we did. You know, when I was younger, we used to go out to both Del Valle and the old Kaiser estate at the east end of town. And we’d play football as kids get together. There were so many walnut trees that in the springtime when the walnuts started coming out before they were dried up and falling. You’d go pull these walnut clusters off of the trees and you’d have walnut wars high behind a tree and throw walnuts at your buddies. We did cardboard sliding on grass hills. I mean, that was, it’s fun to think back now what we did for entertainment compared to kids today, because so much more is available to the kids. It’s just it’s a different time you made your entertainment back then.

AH: That’s right. And didn’t let so in the 60s, 70s, that was when BART came in and and the thruway, right?

CB: BART came in and 68, there was a lot that happened in Lafayette in 68, it became a city. So it got voted on as a city in 68, I obviously, we graduated from Acalanes in 68. You know, there was it was kind of the end of an era, which in the beginning of the 60s was this age of innocence and then John Kennedy gets assassinated, his brother gets assassinated, Martin Luther King gets assassinated. We’ve got this war going on on and then we got all this racial social unrest. I mean the 60s was it, and, and that’s kind of the bad side of it. We also had the best music in the world going on in the 60s and a lot of it. A lot of it originated in the Bay Area. There was a San Francisco sound that, you know, I mean, no matter where you were you were listening to music. I think I wrote to you and told you about how we used to on Friday and Saturday night we would go out to the end of a cul-de-sac someplace there wasn’t a lot of houses that were built they had streets in but they didn’t have houses and we’d find those cul-de-sacs and we’d park a bunch of cars open some doors turn on the radio, everybody be playing the same music. You know, you’d have a beer or two but it wasn’t, nobody got hurt, you know, nobody was out trying to destroy anybody’s property or get stupid or anything like that. It was just a lot of fun.

AH: Sure, sure. Now we, just wondering if there’s anything else that you would like to talk about that we haven’t talked about yet?

CB: Well, I’d like to make mention of all of the kids that I grew up with in Lafayette. I went through grammar school at Montecito, which was at the east end of town and then went to Fairview, which was up in Burton Valley for a year, and then converted over to Stanley and then from there over at Acalanes, and so there was this great camaraderie we all knew each other and we were all good friends with each other and yeah maybe there were different social groups that hung out more together, but we were at this space and time together. What’s been ironic is we still to this day, 55 years later, or 56 years later, have this wonderful connection with each other. I write to a lot of my classmates just to kind of keep us all connected and talk about a variety of subjects, but it always comes around to how fortunate we were to grow up in Lafayette at that unique time of the 50s and 60s and watching an area in a community grow up. Most of those classmates have moved on, they’ve moved away. They live in other parts of the country now, but I still stay in touch. And for a few locals that are still here hanging out we still get together and, you know, they used to be go down to El Charro, but now El Charro gone, dammit.

AH: Oh, I love that place.

CB: Oh, you know I mean it wasn’t that their food was so great, it was just wonderful. It was every time we’d have a class reunion. We would play golf on Friday we, Friday night we would either go for a tour of the school, and then end up down at El Charro. And then Saturday was usually some banquet dinner someplace. And Sunday was a picnic out at the Lafayette Reservoir. We’ve done that for quite a few 30, 40, 50 year anniversaries and and it’s just we all gather, and yeah the groups getting a little smaller because some are aren’t healthy enough or some are passing away. It’s nice to still keep us all connected so that’s when is…

AH: when is the next one going to happen?

CB: We, we were talking about having one at 55 anniversary and, and I was, boy between whole variety of things, daughter getting married, son coming into business. I had a lot of personal events and I said you know what guys if you want to have the reunion I’m not going to do it. And one of my very dearest friends Deidre who we were in grammar school together her and I seem to kind of headed up and, and she too had a lot of events going on in her life, I think the next one’s going to come at 60. Although…

AH: And what year will that be?

CB: That would be 28.

AH: Okay, okay.

CB: Four years from now. Yeah.

AH: All right, I would like to thank you so much for taking the time today to talk to us at the Lafayette Historical Society and share your stories. And I would say we could easily do a part two to this interview if you’re interested.

CB: Being part Italian, I’m no shortage of words. I do, and I’m very passionate about the community that I grew up in, and that we all live in because it is one of the best places on earth bar none, I travel the world in my business. And every time I come back I look at Lafayette, I look at where I live here in Alamo and I go how fortunate are we.

AH: Well, thank you so much and we look forward to talking with you again and look for this. We’ll put this interview online so other people can enjoy it, and thank you for sharing your photos as well. I think people really enjoy hearing about the history and from people who are there.

CB: Great. Thank you.