Background
Joseph Rappa was born in Italy in 1895. He came to Monterey in 1931, from Pittsburg, Calif. where he was a salmon fisherman.
After several years of working on sardine boats in Monterey, he opened a tannery (for preserving fishing nets) and general
marine supply store on Fisherman's Wharf. With the decline of the sardine industry in the late 1940's he started a restaurant
at the end of the wharf, Rappa's Seafood Grotto, in 1953, which he operated along with his sons until his death in 1972. J.
Harvey Waugh was born in Maine in 1896. He came to Monterey in the late 1920s to work as an engineer for the F. E. Booth cannery,
installing and servicing boilers. He established his own boiler service company that continued long after the end of the sardine
canneries.