Verne Dyson, author of the book, “A Century of Brentwood” was born in Calloway County, Missouri in 1879.  Much of his youth was spent in Missouri and Clayton, New Mexico.  He graduated from the West Denver High School and attended the Central College in Missouri.  Upon graduating from college with a major in journalism in 1905 he became a feature writer for the Kansas City Star.  In 1907 he took a job with the Los Angeles Times as manager of the Pasadena News Bureau as well as Sunday editor.  While working for the Times he became interested in the history of Los Angeles and eventually wrote a manuscript on the history of the city.  During this time he developed a friends with George Hazard a member of the Hazard Historical Association.  Upon Hazard’s death in 1914, Verne Dyson bought Hazard’s collection of historical material.  The collection increased in size to over 10,000 items and is part of the California Digital Library Archives.

At the end of World War I, Dyson went the China to become Dean of Williams College.  “In 1921 he became professor of English and Chinese history at the University of the Philippines in Manila and helped to found the Philippine Academy of Social Sciences there.” (http://content.cdlib.org) In 1933 he was made the director of the Chinese Studies Institute.  Between 1940 and 1961 he served as Curator of the Walt Whitman Museum  at Huntington, Long Island.  He founded the Brentwood Bulletin during this time.  Dyson retired in 1961 and moved to Los Angles and he died in 1962.

-M. Koferl, Local History Room Newsletter, May 2007