The Amazing Howard Knohl, 1937-2023


It’s safe to say there’s a lot you don’t know about the late, amazing Dr. Howard Knohl, the Peralta Hills aristocrat who grew up in depression-era Brooklyn poverty, who dreamed of building an Anaheim Performing Arts Center, and who died in October at the age of 86 from prostate cancer probably caused by exposure to Agent Orange during his service in Vietnam. So we’re here to fill you in on just some of it.

Brooklyn 1937

Howard Knohl was born in Depression-Era Brooklyn, four years before the US joined the Great War against the Nazis. Around the same time Brooklyn saw the birth of Jerry Stiller, Sandy Koufax, Woody Allen, Louis Gossett Jr., Elliot Gould, Richie Havens, Lou Reed, Joy Behar, Arlo Guthrie, Larry David, and Jackie Robinson. What a borough, what a decade!

Things were tough for just about everyone during the Depression, including Howard’s parents who owned a luncheonette on historic Nostrand Ave, which they named Noel’s Luncheonette (figuring that was an easier spelling for people than Knohl’s.) They dreamed that Howard would one day take that luncheonette over, or at least one of his two brothers would. But Howard had bigger dreams, and so did his brothers. And anyway the place burned down.

The Collector Bug. Howard was a lonely kid, says his wife Linda. And one thing he did, when he wasn’t riding his bicycle all over Brooklyn, was to COLLECT things – an excellent foreshadowing of how he was later to become the wealthy Dr. Knohl we all knew. Young Howard had a big stamp collection, and he had a big COIN collection – the latter of which later turned out to be valuable enough to pay for… well, we’ll get to that later.

And when young Howard rode his bike, as often as not it was to his best friends’ house, two brothers who lived BLOCKS AND BLOCKS AWAY. This is important because these brothers’ parents were the most important influence in his early life – they perceived young Howard’s insatiable intelligence and curiosity, knew he was destined for more than running a Nostrand Avenue luncheonette, and urged him to pursue his EDUCATION. Which he did, graduating from Brooklyn College with a major in physics, where a counselor convinced him he was cut out for Medical School.

But before we leave Howard’s beloved Brooklyn, let’s just mention that he was always a big sports fan all his life, and stayed loyal to Brooklyn and New York wherever he lived. He’d talk your ears off with every detail about his favorite teams – the New York Giants, the Mets, the Knicks. But when the greatest baseball team of them all – the Brooklyn Dodgers – left Brooklyn for LA in 1957, THAT was unforgivable. He never spoke their name again.

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Studying While Jewish.

The New York Medical College was a prestigious institution in Manhattan, and they were happy to accept the promising young Howard Knohl, with the stellar academic record he’d achieved at Brooklyn College. But. He wasn’t allowed to enroll for three more years. Why?

Because Howard was Jewish. And the College had a “CAP” in place for how many Jews they could accept each year, or there’d be too many! This was common, many colleges including all the Ivy League ones had this policy – something like the opposite of affirmative action. (I did NOT know that.)


So Howard spent those three years working as a CHEMIST, working on “WAXES” I understand. And then went on to excel at New York Medical College, where his boyhood coin collection paid for his first year!

Linda and the “Smoker.”

“I met Howard in 1960 at a smoker, and it was love at first sight,” said Linda to me at her kitchen table. “We got engaged right away, and we were married within the year.”

Wait – a “smoker?” What’s that? Turns out it has nothing to do with smoking, that’s just what fraternities called their parties back then, and Linda, a young Queens girl then attending Howard’s old alma mater Brooklyn College, had been tapped to be a hostess there, and sparks flew!

“Oh, they call it that because it’s like, smoking hot?” I suggested, and their daughters Lori and Andrea were all, “I like how this guy thinks!” “Smoker” does show up with a fourth [informal, dated] definition of “social event featuring sketches, songs, etc., whether or not smoking is carried out.

In any case, to crib from their “Knohl Collection” bio, “Less than one year later, penniless, but hopelessly in love, they married and moved into a one-room apartment in the heart of Brooklyn. For six years they lived frugally and focused on their growing family,” and that would be including their first two kids, Robert and Lori.


And Dr. Knohl was now a RADIOLOGIST, the kind of doctor who specializes in diagnosing and treating injuries and diseases using medical imaging procedures (like X-rays and more recent technology.) And then suddenly in 1967, at the age of 30, this radiologist father got…

Drafted!

It was the height of the War in Vietnam, and everybody was getting drafted – physicians could be drafted up to the age of 33, and the Army REALLY needed RADIOLOGISTS! So his little family was moved to a base in El Paso, while Howard was made a Captain and put in charge of a field hospital near the Cambodian border, an area with a lot of Vietcong tunnels.

They say this was the hardest time of Howard’s life – not getting shelled by the Vietcong every evening, which happened, and not watching American planes regularly drop Agent Orange all over which also happened, but having to be in charge of TRIAGE – deciding which wounded American soldiers got to live or had to die. THAT was the hardest part.

This Agent Orange exposure would later get to Howard, and the final decades of his life would spent in pain, battling the prostate cancer that finally finished him off last October.

And one of his most humiliating memories was coming home to America and having to go through a “full body inspection” (as all servicemen had to) just to see if he was smuggling drugs into San Francisco.

The cherished kosher dogtag.

From there he flew to his family in El Paso, but they’d all been hearing a lot about how good life was out west, so instead of returning to New York they decided to head out to…

California!

The family settled into Los Alamitos for several years, where they had two more kids – Stephen and Andrea. The brilliant and ambitious radiologist became the head of the radiology department in Westminster General Hospital, and soon had many other radiologists working under him. He started his own private practice just outside Los Alamitos General Hospital (where he also worked) in the late 70’s, and another one in Downey.

Linda worked as well as an interior designer, and according to their bio, “With fewer financial constraints, Linda and Howard started to travel throughout the United States and Europe. They explored museums and galleries, enjoyed theatrical and musical performances, and formed a deep appreciation for history, world cultures, and all forms of art.

And then, around 1976, a friend told Howard about some property, just over an acre at the time, up in Anaheim Hills – I’m sorry, a SECTION of Anaheim Hills known as Peralta Hills. Howard fell in love with the place, the scenery and all, and raved to Linda, “Peralta Hills could become the Bel Air of Orange County!”


Bel Air, I wondered – what does that mean? Google suggests, “Bel Air has continued to be a highly sought-after neighborhood for the wealthy and famous and is home to some of the world’s wealthiest people. The neighborhood has also become known for its stunning architecture, with many of its mansions being considered architectural masterpieces that have become iconic landmarks.” I see that it’s also right across the freeway from the Getty Museum!

So Howard bought up that acre-plus, moved his family up to Peralta Hills, and soon bought a neighboring property for a total of 3 and a half acres – it was all orange groves back then – and set to work single-handedly designing a kingdom…

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Fox Pointe Manor, & the Knohl Collection


It really seems like more than three and a half acres when you’re at Fox Pointe. It’s a whole other world, you can get lost there. And Howard never stopped working on it, adding to it. In 2020 when I knew him, he was all excited about some new stage he was adding. And for four decades, he regularly loaned it out to nonprofits for events.

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You’re first greeted by a watchful German shepherd named, of course, “Brooklyn.” Once I asked him why he named his place Fox Pointe. It’s because the place was overrun by foxes, which his German shepherds made quick work of, over the decades. Must have been different German shepherds. I wonder if they were all named Brooklyn.

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And once I asked, “Wait, you were a RADIOLOGIST? Is this how retired radiologists live? How much do radiologists make? How did you get all this?”

And he explained that most of his wealth came from his tireless COLLECTING. (Remember how young Howard paid for his first year of medical school with his childhood coin collection?) “I have a very good eye, Vern. I can find great things that nobody else notices.” And he would often auction off priceless items. Which brings us to the fabled Knohl Collection. And here I shall rest my weary fingers and brain, and copy a few paragraphs from the Knohl Collection website:


“…It wasn’t until the mid-1980s, when Howard was gifted a rare first-edition book, that his passion for collecting was unleashed. [sic – RE-unleashed – Vern.] Captivated by the illustrations, text, and typography, he began to collect English language first editions printed before the year 1700. His anthology of historical texts, now over 4,000 titles, fills several libraries in the house and is believed to be the largest privately owned collection of its kind.

“While accumulating rare books, the Knohls began to purchase art from the 15th through the 19th century. In an attempt to integrate the two collections, they selected paintings that depicted themes and scenes from the antiquarian volumes that lined their shelves. Currently, the Knohl home is decorated with over 260 canvases, a collection that spans genres, generations, and geographic boundaries.

“Over the years the collection has expanded to include richly carved ivory pieces, beautiful bronze statues, and ornate clocks from all over Europe and the United States. In the mid-1990’s pocket match safes (small containers used to safely hold early friction matches) became a central focus of their collection, both for the historical value as well as in appreciation of their beauty.  With more than 21,000 pieces, it is currently the largest known accumulation of match safes existing in the world.


“In the last ten years the Knohls have added several other art forms to the collection, including gilded cobalt demitasse cup and saucer sets from the 17th through the 19th centuries, rare and exquisite 19th century cheroot cases (small hand-painted cigar cases), and yads (Torah pointers) from every continent.  They have also accumulated over 40,000 pieces of large format sheet music. In addition to the intrinsic value of the music itself, detailed illustrations by well-known artists enhance many of the covers. Most recently walking canes from around the world sparked Howard’s interest. The Knohls’ compilation of canes currently totals more than 500, a splendid collection that combines ingenuity and beauty with historical significance. [Much more of the collection here.]


“Howard and Linda Knohl’s passion for the arts extends well beyond collecting. For over fifteen years they have dedicated themselves to bringing world-class musical theater to their community and increasing the awareness of and the appreciation for all forms of art…”

…And THAT segues smoothly, friends, into:

APAC, Dr. Knohl’s White Whale.


Linda had been a Board member, and later President, of Musical Theater West in Long Beach, which put on shows at the Carpenter Center, and one night while attending a performance there, Howard had the vision – Anaheim needs its own Performing Arts Center! – the vision that would drive him for over a decade.

Since attending an opera in New York at age 17, Howard had loved Broadway, off-Broadway, musical theater, drama. And now he wanted it for Anaheim, and especially as something to leave for Linda, his “muse,” and set to work on the Anaheim Performing Arts Center Foundation.

The bold and sweeping plan, which EVERYBODY loved the IDEA of, was buffeted between the rocks of financing and dirty Anaheim politics. By the time I heard about it, it had something for everyone: a 12-acre campus with THREE theaters, a museum to display some of Howard’s 80,000-piece art collection, a restaurant and leased office space that would help pay the bills, a central tower that’d be one of the highest in OC, and even cheap or free amenities for local youth to learn and work on arts.

And it would cost $700 million. And it would be located where the City National Grove of Anaheim is. It would REPLACE The Grove. (Some of us wondered why it HAD to be THERE, replacing one of the few City-owned properties that still turns a profit, and not in some place like West Lincoln that needs investment and revitalization. And apparently the Grove, adjacent to the coveted Angels Stadium property, proved to be an unfortunate choice of location.)

Some eyebrows were raised in late 2016 when, at the VERY LAST COUNCIL MEETING before losing their majority, Jordan Brandman, Kris Murray, and Lucille Kring (all of whom were notorious for public subsidies to contributors) rushed through an agreement to give the APAC Foundation first rights for “acquisition and development” of the Grove site. The agreement only lasted a year and was contingent on the Foundation’s fundraising.

The fiscal conservatives led by Mayor Tom Tait and Jose Moreno, who took power right after that for two years, loved the idea of APAC (who doesn’t?) but they didn’t believe the funding was there for the $700 million project, and feared the city would somehow end up on the hook for it. NONSENSE, insisted Howard, we have all or most of the funding lined up, but the investors need to be sure we’ve got a lease in place with the city for the property – a “bona-fide offer” I think he said. So the project stayed in limbo, between a rock and hard place.

As Harry Sidhu geared up for his close 2018 Mayoral race against Ashleigh Aitken, he and EVERY ONE of what would become his lockstep five-member majority (later to be known as the “Cabal”) promised the Knohls they’d make sure APAC became a reality, and Howard believed them, and supported them. That’s Sidhu, Jordan Brandman, Trevor O’Neil, Steve Faessel and Lucille Kring. Not the right people to trust!

(Actually Howard didn’t literally contribute to Sidhu. As he admitted to me and Donna one afternoon, “The Aitkens are good friends, and Ashleigh used to run around Fox Pointe and play when she was a little girl, so I didn’t feel right giving to Harry… but I did want Harry to win, so instead I gave to [Democrat spoiler candidate] Lorri Galloway. A lot of people I know did that. Of course I regret it now.”)

Sidhu beat Ashleigh by 472 votes, and every one of Sidhu’s 5-member majority turned their back on the Knohls and APAC, and voted in lockstep to hand the Grove over to Angels owner Arte Moreno as part of their sweetheart Stadium giveaway (which has landed some of them in prison.)

Howard felt “stabbed in the back.” I think he reached out to me when he heard I was launching a Recall of Sidhu in early 2020, and contributed to that – a recall that was hamstrung by the COVID pandemic (which also put the crimp on further APAC fundraising.) Later in the year he donated to my friend Kenneth Batiste and held a fundraiser for Jeanine Robbins, but that was dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands Disney and its allies spent on their opponents Avelino and Faessel.

As you know, in ’22 the FBI came in and busted Mayor Sidhu for his corrupt dealings with the Angels, and the Stadium deal was cancelled. Howard did support Ashleigh for Mayor that year, and the last time I saw him was at an Ashleigh fundraiser at Mama Cozza’s.

And a year later the Amazing Dr. Howard Knohl finally succumbed to his prostate cancer. Due to his service in Vietnam (and the probable link of his cancer to Agent Orange exposure) he was given a military ceremony at Fox Pointe in November, with the So Cal Patriot Guard Riders.

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“Please don’t put too much politics into your story, Vern,” requested Linda, at the kitchen table.

“But Mom!” objected one of the daughters, “how is he going to avoid talking about politics when he describes what happened with the Performing Arts Center?”

“Well, please try to get across what Howard was like. He was interested in EVERYTHING – history, geography, the arts, sports… he could talk about nearly anything in great detail. He was a Renaissance Man.”

“Yes he was,” I agreed.

“He was a visionary.”

“And he loved mentoring young people. Vern, I should show you some of the letters young people have sent him over the years, young people who were inspired by Howard.”

“I’d love to print some of those, and take out whatever identifying details…”

“We’ll get those to you. He taught them that they can do anything, they can start from nothing, like he did, and follow their dreams.”

“He convinced them they could do anything they set their minds to.”

“He wanted young people to take RISKS.”

“No, don’t write THAT,” interjected Linda, “with risks you could lose everything.”

“MOM!” exclaimed both daughters, “That’s the WHOLE IDEA of risk.”

Howard’s favorite song was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (which I always play segueing into Ravels’ Bolero.) So we all went over to the familiar grand piano, and sang that song. And some Christmas songs too, because Christmas of 2023 was getting close.



There’ll be a “Celebration Of Life” for Howard Knohl at Fox Pointe Manor, on April 20. I’ll be playing piano there. Unless his family doesn’t like this story. I think Howard would have liked it.

About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.