Back in the day: Dick Haemmerle

Over 40 years ago, when SignCraft was just an idea we batted around while we were making signs in our own shop, we talked about it with the late Chester Cunningham. He gave us a list of top commercial sign people—all sign painters back then—that he thought we should get photographs from for those early issues. One of them was the late Dick Haemmerle of San Diego, California.

Dick was a creative, skillful, second-generation sign painter who spent over 50 years in the industry—as Haemmerle Signs in La Jolla from 1968 to 1979, then as Bay Signs in Pacific Beach from 1979 on. He encouraged us to go forward with the idea of a magazine for sign painters and commercial sign shops. We included many examples of his work in SignCraft over the years and featured Dick in the September/October 1993 issue.

Besides being an ace sign painter, Dick was an accomplished musician, a softball player who played in several of the Senior Softball World Series and a great cook. That, along with his skills as a designer and sign painter, made for an interesting life.