Annie Margaret Walker, a former resident of Pacific Palisades, passed away quietly on October 31 in Contra Costa, California. She was 92. Born in Calgary, Canada, Annie married Winford Earl Walker in 1942 and moved with him to Pacific Palisades in 1946. They lived here until 1951, when they moved to the Bay Area, where Annie spent many happy years raising four children while working as an accountant. Annie loved life and touched all with her great spirit and warm affection that she shared with everyone. She had a passion for music and dancing that she enjoyed at the town’s senior center for 35 years. She is survived by her four children, Gerald, Vicki, Brian and Wendy (husband Steve), and one of her four brothers, Eddie (wife Elaine) of Calgary. There will be no public memorial at her request.
Santa Monica Finds New ‘Home’
Photo by Rich Schmitt, Staff Photographer
By MARY ROURKE Special to the Palisadian-Post Who founded the city of Santa Monica? History buffs might look for the answer in the public library or on the Internet. But this fall there are more than books to peruse for the answer. The Santa Monica History Museum opened inside the main branch of the Santa Monica Public library in late October. Highlights of the collection are on display in a 5,000 square-foot space near the Seventh Street entrance, offering a fresh mix of vintage photographs and memorabilia with interactive computer displays. Louise Gabriel, president of the new museum, conceived the idea soon after she helped to found the Santa Monica Historical Society in 1975. This year, she assisted in overseeing the move from its former location on Euclid Street near Colorado Avenue to the library. The museum will remain independent of the library and lease space from the city for $1 per year. Gabriel’s interest in preserving keepsakes and valuables dates back to her childhood when a fire destroyed her family home. She was eight at the time. ‘All of my mother’s memorabilia was lost, all of her baby pictures, and I realized how important history is,’ she says. Gabriel first imagined a history museum for Santa Monica when she helped to plan and coordinate the city’s centennial celebration in 1975. She was impressed by the items that long-time Santa Monica residents loaned for the centennial exhibit. ‘I knew that most of the things would be lost if someone didn’t find a place to protect and preserve them,’ she says. Gabriel and other like-minded people began collecting memorabilia. She was determined to find a permanent home for the growing collection. ’I’ve never been afraid to take on a big task and make it a success,’ she says. ‘I had a goal and worked until I achieved it.’ The new museum’s exhibitions will rotate to allow more of the collection to be seen over time. There are more than 600,000 historical photographs, maps, land deeds and other documents in the archive. The opening exhibit covers major developments in the city’s history, starting with its founding. Two men get credit for the rise of a commercial district: Colonel Robert S. Baker and John P. Jones, who was a U.S. senator from Nevada at the time. Baker came to Los Angeles from San Francisco, where he sold supplies to gold-rush miners. In 1872 he purchased some 32,000 acres of the Rancho San Vicente y Santa Monica from the heirs of Francisco Sepulveda, who held the land-grant deed. Baker paid $55,000 for the property that extended south from what is now Topanga Canyon to Pico Boulevard and west from the Pacific Ocean to Sepulveda Boulevard. He also acquired a small portion of Rancho Boca de Santa Monica for which he paid $6,000. He ultimately consolidated his holdings. While the Marquez and Reyes families thrived as ranchers on their land grants in Santa Monica Canyon and opened small businesses to accommodate vacationing campers, Baker dreamed of an important commercial harbor and a railroad to link Santa Monica with the Los Angeles & Independent line that traveled east. Jones provided the infusion of cash. In 1874 he purchased three-quarters of Baker’s land holdings for $162,500 and began to turn seaside ranch land into a commercial town. Jones and Baker planned for hotels, restaurants and other businesses, and held a land auction in 1875, the year now claimed as the official beginning of the city. A portrait of Jones’ wife, Georgina, on view at the History Museum shows her dressed in finery that suggests her comfortable life. The couple lived in a three-story house with 17 bedrooms, on property that is now the Miramar Hotel at the corner of Wilshire and Ocean Avenue. The Santa Monica Evening Outlook printed its first edition in 1876. The History Museum owns the complete archive that shows how the newspaper’s name changed several times before its last issue was published in 1998. By then it was known as ‘The Outlook.’ A mural that hung in the newspaper’s lobby is now on display at the museum. The artist, Hugo Ballin, was one of the foremost muralists of the early 20th century and a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades. Baker married Arcadia Bandini de Sterns, a widow who was a good businesswoman. He sold her his property in 1879 and from then on she handled their real estate development business. Two of Arcadia’s embroidered fans are on display at the History Museum, along with a photograph of her taken in the early 1900s. She is a widow by then, and sits on the veranda at her Ocean Avenue home gazing across the road at a bluff of land overlooking the bay. She owned it, with Senator Jones, and before she died in 1912 they donated the land to the state. Their gift is now called ‘Palisades Park.’ A model of the park’s Chinese-inspired pergola is on view in the History Museum. It was made for the museum by Miniatures West, a local company that specializes in small-scale reproductions. Other contributions to the museum include stonework for the foyer and the restrooms as well as a granite wall listing major donors donated by Bourget Brothers Foundry in Santa Monica and a financial gift by Morley Builders, another local business, to support the museum’s library, which includes many out-of-print books. Before the turn of the 19th century, vacation hotels, a beer garden at Third Street and Utah (now Broadway) and an opera house helped establish Santa Monica as a resort city. But families were encouraged to settle in the area, too. The first school operated by the county was established in 1876. The town that Baker and Jones put in place continued to grow. Visitors to the History Museum can learn more about the decades of the 1920s through the 1960s, when the Douglas Aircraft Company thrived on property that is now the Santa Monica airport. There is a replica of a Douglas DC3 plane on view, with a photograph of the cockpit. ’Douglas was a major employer and played a big part of the city’s growth,’ says Gabriel. During World War II the company employed 160,000 workers. The city’s amusement parks, ‘pleasure piers’ as Gabriel calls them, are also included in the current exhibit. Visitors can take a computer-simulated ride on the Whirlwind Dipper, a roller coaster on the Santa Monica Pier in the 1920s. On a separate wall, a giant scaled seahorse that once stood at the entrance to Pacific Ocean Park on Pier Avenue fills the space. The park, with its nautical theme, closed in 1967. The Santa Monica Pier celebrated its centennial in 2010. Ho Nguyen designed the exhibit installation that is an artful balance of artifacts, information boards and open space. The city’s history in 3-D is home at last. For more information, contact (310) 395-2290 or visit santamonicahistory.org.
Engelmann to Study at Oxford as Marshall Scholar
Pacific Palisades resident Sasha Engelmann, who at 22 has already achieved remarkable academic success, has been selected a Marshall Scholar, one of only 40 college students chosen nationwide, and will attend a graduate program at Oxford University next fall. She plans to pursue a master of philosophy degree in geography and environment. Engelmann has continued her interest in environmental science she developed in high school, no doubt encouraged by her father, Steven, who teaches AP Environmental Science at Palisades High School. At Stanford, she served as the president of the Climate Initiatives Group, part of Students for a Sustainable Stanford. While he brother, Elliott, a junior at Tufts University, is also studying environmental science, their mother, Diana, is an English professor at Santa Monica College. The Marshall Scholarships, founded in 1953, commemorate the humane ideas of the Marshall Plan and are funded by Her Majesty’s Government. Scholars from any American university are free to choose their course of study at any institution in the United Kingdom and are given two-year terms, allowing for total immersion in one field. Engelmann, a PaliHi graduate and currently a senior at Stanford, is majoring in earth systems (biosphere track) and English and French literature. Although a seemingly schizophrenic academic track, Engelmann’s discipline choice finds its logic. She is particularly interested in the environment and man’s relationship to it, both physically and philosophically. ’I am fascinated by the way people perceive wilderness and climate change,’ Englemann told the Palisadian-Post. ‘The challenges today contrast to those of the 1980s. Then, people connected environmental changes to specific places, such as deforestation and pollution. I see our environment dilemma today as how people perceive space. It is hard to visualize through our everyday actions that we are creating carbon dioxide emissions. Is it air? How big is it? How does my car-use transform the landscape worldwide? Can we cognitively perceive how everyday actions connect to the atmosphere or biosphere?’ This science is comprehensible, but the connection with art is more subtle and really what fascinates Engelmann. Her interest was piqued by a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2008 to see the work of Icelandic installation artist Olafur Eliasson, which ‘blew me away,’ and prompted an interest in combining science with art. As a sophomore, she won a Chappell Lougee Scholarship, designed for students pursuing in-depth projects in the humanities, creative arts and qualitative social studies, and with that, she traveled to Berlin to study Eliasson’s site-specific artworks. ‘Eliasson is environmentally conscious,’ Engelmann said. ‘He experiments with how people perceive space, looking to make space tangible. In the ‘Manhattan Waterfall Project’ of 2008, he erected five massive waterfalls in the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. He placed the waterfalls against that huge skyline, thereby changing our culturally engrained impression. You became more aware of the relationship between buildings and the river; you could feel more a part of that space and in turn take more responsibility for that space.’ In her honors thesis, which Engelmann is currently writing, she is comparing the work of Eliasson and contemporary American novelist Mark Danielewsky, who experiments with text by going beyond conventional words on a page. ’In ‘House of Leaves,’ for instance, he created pages that are sometimes upside-down, and introduced a character who is based on a Federico Fellini character, so one had to see the movie in order to understand the book,’ Engelmann said. ‘He is concerned with the sovereignty of print text and how it functions in the context of other media.’ Engelmann will graduate this spring and expects to take it easy’in her fashion’this summer. ‘I am playing with the idea of a scholarship at the Museum of Modern Art in New York or working with a group on urban ecology,’ she said. ‘I would like to experience New York; I’m not too attached to L.A.’
Mary Cohen Wins First in Art Association Show
Pacific Palisades artist Mary Cohen won first place in the photography category for ‘Bike Path, Santa Monica Beach’ in the Pacific Palisades Art Association’s November Juried Show, on display at the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real. Cohen, whose artistic curiosity runs from drawing, painting, sculpting and comics, has yet to take a formal photo class. Her photographic investigations often take place on long walks around her neighborhood or at the beach. She studied animation at Cal Arts and is currently working on a graphic novel and assembling her work in a series of small art books that will be published.
St. Matthew’s ‘Blue Christmas’ Service Dec. 21
Cries of ‘Merry Christmas,’ nonstop caroling and general merriment contrast with the feelings of many people at this time of year. For those who suffer or have suffered from the death of a loved one, the pain of divorce, or a struggle with sickness, the holiday season can be isolating and difficult. This year, St. Matthew’s Episcopal church is offering a ‘Blue Christmas’ service’a service of solace on the longest night of the year, December 21, at 7 p.m. in the sanctuary, 1031 Bienveneda. ’The service will have a quiet, candle-lit, comforting feel as we welcome together the coming of Christ into the world with music of the season, a homily and a celebration of the Eucharist,’ The Reverend Betsy Anderson said. She will be assisted by The Reverend Brian Palmer. St. Matthew’s Music Director Tom Neenan has prepared a program of traditional music, accompanied by a soloist. Anderson invites all members of the local community to join the service and the reception that follows. Contacts: Brian Palmer (310) 573-7787, ext. 117) or Betsy Anderson (310) 573-7787, ext. 122).
Thursday, December 16 – Thursday, December 23
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16
Fred Keller, 91, a retired adjunct professor and actor, discusses ‘Spearing the Wild Blue Boar: Shakespeare vs. Oxford: The Authorship Question,’ 7:30 p.m. at Village Books on Swarthmore. Is William Shakespeare the true author of the poems and plays attributed to him? This book silences those who say that he isn’t. It takes particular aim at those who champion Edward de Vere, the 17th-century Earl of Oxford, whose crest was a wild blue boar.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17
The Palisades Branch Library presents a free screening of ‘Westside Story’ (1961) with Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, Russ Tamblyn and George Chakiris, 1 p.m. in the library’s community room, 861 Alma Real. This highly-acclaimed musical, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ’Romeo and Juliet’ set against the backdrop of gang warfare in 1950’s New York, won 10 Academy Awards. An afternoon of music by the award-winning Palisades High Marching Band, featuring a mixed holiday program of full-band pieces and small ensembles, 2 to 5 p.m. on the Village Green, Swarthmore at Sunset. ‘
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 18
Bobbie Rich, a professional artist member of the Pacific Palisades Art Association, will host a reception from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real.’The public is invited. To view her work, visit bobbierich.com.’
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19
High tea and piano concert with Steven Vanhauwaert, 4 p.m. at Aldersgate Retreat Center, 925 Haverford. A graduate of the Brussels Royal Conservancy and the USC Thornton School of Music, Vanhauwaert performs around the world. For tickets ($40), call (310) 454-5529.
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21
St. Matthew’s Episcopal church offers a ‘Blue Christmas’ service to provide solace on the longest night of the year, 7 p.m. in the sanctuary, 1031 Bienveneda. The community is invited. (See story, page 10.) Free family sing-a-long to celebrate the holidays and solstice, sponsored by the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, 7:30 p.m. in Woodland Hall (cafeteria) at Temescal Gateway Park, corner of Sunset and Temescal Canyon Road. Guests will enjoy songs, stories and goodies. The fireplace will be lit and hot cider served. Free parking.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22
Sunrise Assisted Living hosts a free Alzheimer’s support group on the second Monday and fourth Wednesday of each month, 6:30 p.m. at 15441 Sunset. Please RSVP by calling the front desk at (310) 573-9545.
Pali Wins Beach Invitational
It might have seemed like a bold statement when Palisades High girls’ basketball coach Torino Johnson said before the season that his team’s goal was to make noise in the state tournament, especially since it lost in the first round of the City Section playoffs last season. Following the Dolphins’ 60-55 triumph over reigning City champion Carson, however, that scenario seems not so far-fetched. For in avenging last year’s seven-point loss in the finals, Palisades won its own tournament outright for the first time and served notice that it is ready to challenge for the section title. The Dolphins were fourth the first two years, fifth in 2006, third in 2007 and finished in a three-way tie for first with Marymount and Notre Dame Academy in 2008 before their runner-up showing 12 months ago. This year, the championship is theirs alone. Victory was not gained without tense moments, though. Palisades led 32-28 at halftime and 49-36 after three quarters, but Carson battled back to briefly take the lead in the fourth quarter thanks to point guard Chante Miles, who had 20 points, five assists, five rebounds and two steals. Point guard Ashlie Bruner was selected Most Valuable Player and was joined on the All-Tournament team by fellow Dolphins Donae Moguel, Nicole Flyer, Asia Smith and Skai Thompson. Palisades won all four of its games in the Gold Division. The tournament featured all three of last year’s City champions–Division I winner Carson, Division II winner El Camino Real and Small Schools winner LACES, which lost by one point to Carson in last Thursday’s semifinals. Palisades survived a late rally to hold off ECR, 46-38, in the other semifinal before using its balanced attack to turn the tables on the Colts. Undersized but resilient, the Conquistadores played even until the final two minutes, when Bruner and Moguel took over. Each finished with 15 points. Bruner was marvelous in the final, filling up the stat sheet with 21 points, six rebounds, three assists and one steal. Moguel made her presence felt in the post with 16 points, nine rebounds, three steals and three blocks and Flyer added 14 points, five rebounds and two blocks. In the first round last Tuesday, Palisades (4-0) used its pressure defense and up-tempo style to wear down Marymount on its way to a 56-25 victory. The next night the Dolphins started fast and opened a 71-2 halftime over Dorsey’outscoring the overmatched Dons 44-0 in the second quarter–before resting all of their starters in the second half of a 79-17 romp. Marymount won the Bronze Division with a 42-28 victory over Dorsey and Cantwell Sacred Heart Academy beat Camarillo, 43-36, to take first place in the Silver Division. In the end, though, the Dolphins’ seventh annual hoops tournament belonged to the host school. Johnson and his team had little time to savor their tournament victory. The Dolphins were back on the court Monday night against Southern Section powerhouse Santa Ana Mater Dei in the first round of the Matt Dennin Hoops Classic. Next Saturday, Palisades hits the road again for the Nike Tournament of Champions.
Football Falls in City Semis
All season long, whenever it needed a big play the Palisades High football team turned to Malcolm Creer, and all season long he had delivered. The Dolphins’ senior running back was on his way to doing so again last Friday night in the City Section Division II semifinals, breaking through the line with a clear path to the end zone until Chatsworth linebacker Jordan Osburn reached out from behind, stripped Creer of the ball and recovered the fumble to preserve the Chancellors’ 35-28 overtime victory. “I was sure I had it,” Creer said of the play that ended Palisades’ season. “I was on my way there when he came from the back and knocked it out. I didn’t see him.” The outcome was a tough pill to swallow after the Dolphins drove 65 yards in the final minutes to score on Ke’monte Reed’s quarterback sneak with 3.7 seconds left in regulation. That was in spite of having two touchdowns called back on penalties in the last two minutes. Still down, 28-26, Reed ran the option to the right side, faked the pitch and crossed the goal line to tie the game and set up overtime. “I thought it would come down to a two-point conversion in overtime,” Palisades’ first-year coach Perry Jones said. “It looked like both teams would trade scores until the third round when you have to go for two.” Seventh-seeded Palisades (7-6) won the coin toss and elected to play defense first. Elusive Chatsworth quarterback Curtis Ervin scampered seven yards for a touchdown on the Chancellors’ opening overtime possession, putting the Dolphins in yet another must-score scenario. This time, however, Palisades could not conjur up more magic. “It hurts a lot to lose but that’s a good thing because it means you’ve grown accustomed to winning,’ Palisades senior captain Hakeem Jawanza said. “We weren’t satisfied being in the semifinals–we wanted to win the championship and I really thought we were going to do it.” Despite the loss, Palisades secured its first winning season since going 8-3 and losing in the first round of the City’s upper division playoffs in 2000. The Dolphins won six more times than they did last year despite a difficult schedule that included El Camino Real, Santa Monica, City Division I semifinalist Venice and Vista Murrieta, which will play Corona Centennial for the Southern Section Inland Division championship on Friday. “We definitely made strides this year and got people talking about Palisades football,” Jones said. “That drive at the end of the game showed a lot about our character because we not only had to score, we had to get the two-point conversion and we did. I thought the clock was going to run out.” After the Dolphins turned the ball over on downs, Eric Waters scored on a 36-yard run to give sixth-seeded Chatsworth (11-2), the West Valley League runner-up, a 28-20 lead with 3:56 left. The Chancellors had seized the momentum on a 17-play drive ending with Ervin’s five-yard touchdown pass to D’ondre Alexander and Alexander’s 11-yard scoring run. Palisades senior linebacker Elmer Garcia pressured Ervin all game, flushing him out of the pocket,l recovering a fumble and forcing another. Creer took a hand-off, bounced to the outside and scored from 10 yards out to tie the game, 7-7, early in the second quarter. The game remained deadlocked until halftime, but Arte’ Miura ran the second-half kickoff back 82 yards for a touchdown to give the Dolphins their first lead. “The kick bounced right to me, we had a good wedge set up and I took it straight through the hole,” Miura said. “They didn’t tackle well all game, we just hurt ourselves with mistakes and penalties.” Miura increased the lead to 20-7 on an option run to the left side, but the point-after failed. Chatsworth responded with 21 unanswered points in the fourth quarter to build a 28-20 lead, setting the stage for the Dolphins’ last desperate scoring drive. “As the captain it makes me proud that I’m leaving the program better than it was when I got here,” Jawanza said. “It’s still hard to believe the season is over. It took me until Coach Jones was giving his speech afterwards to finally realize it.” Junior Nathan Dodson, who made the most of his opportunities at quarterback this season, expects the Dolphins to reach even greater heights next fall. He will have an even firmer grasp of the Dolphins’ wishbone offense by then–an offense that piled up 414 points in 13 games–an average of 29.5 per game. “Those of us who are coming back have to be on everybody throughout the offseason to do the right things,” Dodson said. “Going into the season, I thought I was ready too but now I really know what it takes. There were only two weeks where I didn’t play and you try to make an impact when your number is called.” Jones said he is most proud of the seniors, who helped raise the bar for a program that suddenly has a bright future. “I’m extremely proud of the leadership the seniors showed in getting this thing turned around,” he said. “And I love the tough, physical way we play. We came a long, long way this season but I feel that we’re just getting started.” Fairfax routed Arleta, 36-12, in Friday’s other semifinal and the biggest disappointment for Jawanza was missing the chance to play the Lions a second time: “I know some of their players and we were all looking forward to a Western League rematch.”
Soccer Squads Start Strong
In its first game under new coach Tianna Oliver, the Palisades High girls soccer team came back to tie Harvard-Westlake, 1-1, in its season opener last Wednesday at Stadium by the Sea. Lilian McGuire netted the equalizer for the Dolphins 10 minutes into the second half on a well-placed shot from the left wing. Hannah Lichtenstein had given the defending Southern Section Division II champion Wolverines the lead late in the first half when she caught Palisades goalkeeper Kiki Bailey off her line and lofted a shot under the crossbar from 30 yards out. “We did a better job of dictating play in the second half and getting some chances,” said Oliver, who implored her team at halftime to play harder. It was a solid result against a strong but short-handed opponent. Harvard-Westlake was missing five starters, one of whom–Palisadian Cami Chapus–was still running cross country, but coach Richard Simms gave the Dolphins credit. “They played really well,” he said. “They’re good. They’ve got a lot of team speed and they were very organized.” A scary moment occurred in the waning moments of the first half when striker Kathryn Gaskin slid for a loose ball, pulled her right hamstring and had to be helped off the pitch. She sat out the second half in obvious pain and left on crutches. “It was hard to watch [the second half] from the bench, but I’m proud of how we played,” Gaskin said. “It hurts pretty bad right now but hopefully I can get back out there soon.” Gaskin scored 27 goals last season to break Lucy Miller’s single-season school record and needs 29 to tie Miller’s record mark of 88 career goals. Palisades hosted its annual Holiday Showcase last Friday and Saturday against Kennedy, Roosevelt and Stockdale and opened Western League play Wednesday against Westchester. Coach Dave Suarez was happy to see his team finish in its opener’a 6-0 shutout over host San Pedro. Steve Diaz and Shane Centkowski each scored twice while Marvin Lemus and David Joy added one goal apiece for the Dolphins. Last weekend, Palisades blanked Mary Star, 3-0, and edged Orange Lutheran, 2-1, in San Pedro Tournament games and on Monday night the Dolphins played to a scoreless draw with Santa Monica at Stadium by the Sea despite having to play the final nine minutes one man down because of a red card. “It’s good to get some goals because we had trouble finishing last year, but I’m more pleased that we’ve only allowed one goal,” Suarez said. “That always bodes well going into league.”
Corneli Reaches City Quarters
At the start of the season, Jessie Corneli had two personal goals: help the Palisades High tennis team win the City team championship and advance farther in the Individual tournament than she did last year. Corneli’s first goal went unfulfilled when Palisades was upset by El Camino Real in the semifinals of the team playoffs in November. She had a chance to make good on her second goal when she played Cassandra Fisbeck of Granada Hills on Monday at Balboa Sports Center in Encino. Corneli reached the third round last fall and after breezing to a 6-1, 6-0 second-round win over Pauline Villaflores of Monroe last Friday, she found herself in the same spot. Corneli was also the only Dolphin left in the tournament after Perri Zaret had to default her second round match against Eagle Rock’s Nicole Kim because of illness and Malina Loehrer and Dahlia Shamsian fell in the second round of the doubles draw to Venice sisters Sarah and Pina Mercado, 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (5)’the same duo Palisades’ pair had defeated 8-4 in Western League play. “It’s disappointing because it was our chance,” said Shamsian, who wants to major in psychology or pharmacy at UCLA. “The team loss definitely hurt more, but we still wanted to win and we played well. They just played a little better.” Despite raising her level of play in the second set, Corneli lost to Fisbeck, 6-1, 6-2, in a match that likely would’ve taken place at the City team finals had Palisades made it because both played No. 2 singles for their respective teams. “Actually, I’d rather play someone who can hit the ball hard like her,” said Corneli, who wants to play more junior tournaments and try yoga to better prepare herself for her senior season. “I mainly tried to hit the ball deep to make longer rallies and keep her back.” Though Zaret has already been declared captain for next season, Corneli also wants to set an example for her teammates going into next season. “I guess we just weren’t supposed to win it this year,” Corneli said, always accentuating the positive. “I played really well this season but I want to do even better next year.”
