What do flying an airplane and starting a business have to do with the price of beans, you might ask. Actually, if you put the question to the incoming Chamber of Commerce president, Antonia Balfour, you’ll discover the logic. Balfour, who’s been flying since she was a teenager and keeps her pilot’s license current, compares the bravery required for both challenges. And as you talk to her, you see that there is indeed a common thread. “I’ve always been a thrill-seeker,’ explains Balfour, who made a cross-country flight with her father two years ago. ‘As a girl, I looked forward to risk-taking. I was the one who went bungee-jumping, skydiving, anything like that. When you think about it, starting a business, being an entrepreneur, is really the ultimate in risk.” After completing four years of her Chinese medical education at Yo San University in Santa Monica, Balfour ventured into unknown territory. “I was really good at being a student, I knew how to do that, but when it came to hanging up my shingle, I didn’t know what to do next.” So she did whatever she could think of to let the world know that she had established an acupuncture business in Pacific Palisades. “I wrote articles for the Palisadian-Post, I participated in networking groups, I joined the Chamber of Commerce and volunteered at the Health Fair.” That was in 2000. Now Balfour has migrated from sharing an office with chiropractor Bruce Beddoe to co-owning Oasis Palisades with Stephanie Kanan. Late last year, she and Kanan opened the health and wellness center, which offers acupuncture, herbs and massage in the Marquez commercial area. While Balfour, 37, is sold on the Palisades village atmosphere, she admits that doing business here is more challenging. Were she located in a large medical building with a select population seeking other medical needs, she thinks that building her business would have been easier. “My practice depends on word of mouth; it is a destination.” Most of her clientele are local, but she does have patients who come from some distance; one woman drives up from Long Beach for infertility treatments. But success in business doesn’t ever relate solely to making money, says Balfour, who follows the same principles in her business as she uses in Chinese medicine’yin and yang. Balance. “Your goal is to try to help somebody feel 100 percent as quickly and inexpensively as possible,” she says. “And if you achieve your goal, you would theoretically put yourself out of business.’ In order to maintain a personal connection with her patients, affording each time and attention, Balfour has developed other business outlets, including creating a line of canine herbs. As she begins her leadership of the Chamber (she will accept the gavel at tonight’s installation dinner), Balfour intends to focus on the health and wellness of the community, just as she does with her clients. “We are inundated with so much bad news in the world and with the economy that people get scared,’ she says. ‘So for me, health and wellness has to do with a positive attitude, motivating people to keep a positive spirit.’ Balfour intends to nurture hopefulness by bringing Chamber members together to work on new projects while maintaining the traditional Chamber activities that aid business growth. She has selected sustainability as the theme for her year in office. Her three-pronged plan includes locating recycling bins around the town on city property, expanding business recycling through a contract with Chrysalis, and introducing restaurant waste composting. To extend recycling throughout the Palisades, the Chamber has applied to the city for a permit to place those familiar blue bins on sidewalks and street corners. ‘The city gave us a $10,000 matching grant to underwrite this plan,’ Balfour says. And Chamber members have met the challenge with sponsorships. Balfour hopes to expand business recycling to reach every part of the town. Currently, the Chamber pays Chrysalis to maintain the village sidewalks and recycle trash. The nonprofit organization helps economically disadvantaged and homeless individuals become self-sufficient through employment opportunities. Balfour has already held her first meeting with restaurant owners to encourage an effort to recycle waste for compost. ‘The city relies on pockets like our community to help them out in these efforts to green the city,’ Balfour says. ‘They recognize that they cannot possibly do this alone.’ Balfour was originally drawn to Los Angeles from her native Florida to study Chinese medicine, which turned out to be propitious. Not only does California offer the best schools in the country, but Balfour found a community that she could embrace as home. Her sense of commitment to Los Angeles and to Pacific Palisades persuaded her husband of 2-‘ years to relocate from his beloved East Coast. ‘Marc is a true New Yorker,’ she admits, ‘but he enjoys a passion for life that we both share.’ The couple, who live in Culver City, still travel to Manhattan, albeit not as much as they did when they were stoking a bicoastal romance, but enough to satisfy the pull towards the ‘city that never sleeps.’

Weathered books with titles such as ‘Roots,’ ‘Les Miserables’ and the ‘Canterbury Tales’ line Rose Gilbert’s bookshelf in the family room of her Pacific Palisades home. The books attest to how Gilbert has spent her life ‘ sharing her love of literature with teenagers. Gilbert, nicknamed ‘Mama G,’ has taught English at Palisades Charter High School since the school opened in 1961. While most teachers retire at age 55, Gilbert ‘ who will turn 90 on August 2 ‘ continues to teach young people, whom she affectionately calls bubbeleh (a term of endearment in Yiddish). She is one of the oldest teachers in the city, state and nation. Twenty-two of her former students are now teachers, counselors or clerical staff at Palisades High, and she has taught many of her current students’ parents. When asked if she ever plans to retire, Gilbert responded ‘Never! They will have to drag me out feet first.’ For that commitment, she received the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Lifetime Teacher and Golden Apple Awards and was named Harvard University’s Impact Teacher of the Year. She also received local and national acclaim, appearing on CBS’s ’48 Hours’ and the ‘CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,’ as well as gracing the cover of Teacher Magazine. Gilbert, who inherited millions from her late husband Sam, also gives generously to PaliHi and UCLA, where she attended college. In recognition of her significant contributions to the community, the Palisades Americanism Parade Association (PAPA) has selected Gilbert as the parade marshal for this year’s Fourth of July parade. ‘We thought that Mrs. Gilbert was a perfect choice for this honor,’ said PAPA President Rob Weber. ‘We wanted to salute her decades of service as a teacher at Palisades High and her financial contributions to the school ‘ highlighted, of course, by her lead gift to the aquatic center.’ Gilbert has donated $1.1 million towards construction of the center, named after her late daughter Maggie. ‘Thousands of Palisadians have been inspired by her teaching over the years, including a number of parade committee members,’ Weber continued. ‘She is a fantastic role model for the community.’ Gilbert, who grew up in Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles, decided to pursue teaching because of her first-grade teacher at Malabar Street Elementary School. ‘She taught me to read,’ Gilbert said. ‘She was a marvelous teacher. I didn’t have all good teachers, but the good outweighed the bad.’ That ability to read exposed Gilbert to a world of literature, and she spent much of her younger years in the library. ‘I loved going to the main library [in downtown L.A.]. That library has a great reading room. I read all the plays that I couldn’t afford to go see. I read them and used my imagination. I still remember reading ‘Street Scene’ by Elmer Rice,’ she said, trailing off into a distant memory. ‘I could just imagine it.’ Her father, Abe Rubin, worked as a tailor at MGM Studios and made coats and dresses for actresses such as Audrey Hepburn, Judy Garland and Eleanor Powell. Her mother, Ida, was a homemaker. She has one sibling, a twin sister Lily, who now lives in Culver City. Lily was also a teacher but left the profession early to stay home with her three children. Gilbert attended Belvedere Junior High and Roosevelt High School, where she met her first husband, Jimmy Corn. He died of an aneurysm when their daughter Maggie was two years old. When Gilbert attended UCLA in the late 1930s, the campus consisted of five buildings with a student population of 2,700. ‘Everyone knew everyone,’ she said. ‘I just loved it.’ She tutored the football team in penmanship for 20 cents per hour. ‘That was ridiculous,’ she said, laughing, adding that she still has the pay stubs. Gilbert graduated from UCLA in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and a teaching credential. Since jobs were scarce, she went to work for MGM as a temp, performing odd jobs. She soon became a contract agent making $35 a week, which was good money at the time, Gilbert said. She recalls actress Ava Gardner coming into her office and plopping her feet on the desk. ‘I said to her, ‘Don’t you ever put your feet on my desk,” said Gilbert, who found Gardner’s actions disrespectful. She soon grew tired of Hollywood. ‘They expect the real world to be like a script ‘ la la land; but it’s not the real world.’ In 1950, she married Sam Gilbert, whom she met through his younger brother. Sam, who had also attended UCLA, was a widow with two sons, Michael and Robert. He was already a real estate developer, and he encouraged Gilbert to pursue her passion for teaching, so she took her first full-time job at University High School in 1956 and later transferred to PaliHi. ‘I hope to teach my students a love of literature, a love of poetry,’ Gilbert told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I hope to teach them the fact that they need to give of themselves to the world ‘ to make the world a better place for themselves and for their children.’ PaliHi Spanish teacher Ruth Mills was a junior in Gilbert’s class in 1969. ‘It was very tough but wonderful preparation for college,’ said Mills, who recalled that UCLA had a test that if high school students passed they could take college courses as a senior. ‘I passed that test, and I credit it to Mrs. Gilbert. Her teaching style was, and is, dynamic, confident and ‘My way or the highway.” Gilbert would assign Mills and her classmates 80 vocabulary words per week and what she called a ‘serious background book report.’ Students were required to read a large nonfiction book in less than a week and write a report about the book that included scholars’ opinions. ‘Her class was the first class in which I learned to pull all-nighters,’ Mills said. Many of Gilbert’s students have shown their appreciation for her. The class of 1964 kidnapped her at 6:30 a.m. to take her out for a pancake breakfast. ‘No one has kidnapped me since then,’ she said, chuckling. The class of 1974 bought her a cake with a go-go dancer figurine that said: ‘We love you Mama G.’ It was a thank you for writing them letters of recommendation to college. Gilbert’s students also stay in touch. Last week, former student Richard Greene, who graduated in 1962 and writes speeches for Barack Obama, spoke to her Advanced Placement English class. For 26 years, Gilbert coached the PaliHi Academic Decathlon team, leading them to city awards for five consecutive years. She believes it’s important for her students not only to study, but also to participate in extracurricular activities, whether sports, leadership or community service. ‘We don’t live in an eggshell; we don’t live in a cave,’ she said. Gilbert spent her adult life following this philosophy. Photo albums with titles such as ‘Poland 1976’ and ‘England 1984’ inked across the bindings are next to the literature books on her bookshelf. Gilbert, who spoke Spanish, and Sam, who spoke nine other languages, spent their free time seeing the world. They were married for 37 years before he died of cancer in 1987 at age 74. She also traveled with her daughter, Maggie, a UCLA graduate and trust lawyer. They went to New York every summer for the Tony Awards, and once saw 23 plays in three weeks while visiting London. ‘She was my companion,’ Gilbert said. Today, Gilbert’s philanthropy honors the memory of her daughter, who died of an embolism in 2004 at age 54. Gilbert pointed to a photo of her daughter wearing a swimming suit in the 1958 Junior Olympics, and Maggie’s gold medal hanging off the wooden frame. Her daughter’s love of swimming prompted her to donate money for the aquatic center at PaliHi. She has also donated to research into bipolar disorder at the Semel Institute in Maggie’s name. She gives numerous scholarships to students at PaliHi and UCLA, many in memory of her daughter. These days, Gilbert spends time with her nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. And of course, she is busy with school, teaching a full load. At the end of the interview, she took out a stack of her students’ writing assignments. ‘I enjoy grading papers,’ she said. ‘It relaxes me.’

Families, Teachers Protest Proposed Cuts By SUE PASCOE Staff Writer Joining more than 40,000 teachers district-wide last Friday, educators from the five public schools in Pacific Palisades spent the first hour of the classroom day on picket lines in front of their schools protesting proposed state education budget cuts. Facing a projected state deficit of more than $14 billion before the end of the fiscal year on June 30, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger originally proposed 10 percent cuts in all areas of the state budget, including education. Schools were slated to receive $4 billion less than is required under Proposition 98. In May, Schwarzenegger’s revised $101.8-billion budget restored a portion of the cuts, but many categories of K-12 funding could still be reduced by up to 10 percent. Fears of pay cuts, larger class sizes and teacher layoffs have prompted action by teachers that included a May 4 car caravan to the governor’s neighborhood in Mandeville Canyon, as well as the ‘One Hour’s Pay for the Kids of L.A.’ demonstration. All teachers who participated in the protest were docked pay for that hour. At Marquez Elementary, there were more than 75 marchers, including parents, students and teachers. Passing drivers honked their horns to show support. ‘The Palisades Charter Complex is a great group of schools,’ said Marquez kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Sosson. ‘It is full of seasoned, interested and well-educated teachers. However, what the district is proposing will continue to devastate the lower-performing schools, where parents and teachers are not able to open their pocketbooks and write out checks for whatever their class or child needs.’ Marquez Principal Phillip Hollis agreed with the message that was being sent. ‘If this is a way to call attention to the budget crisis, and if it helps reduce impact on classrooms, then goal accomplished,’ he said. At Palisades Elementary, while teachers picketed, students were escorted to an assembly, where the current school flag was retired by the American Legion and replaced with a new one. At Canyon School, picketing students, teachers and parents chanted ‘Don’t take from school, it isn’t cool.’ The delayed hour of school turned into an opportunity for Canyon teachers to educate students about potential reductions that would affect them directly. California already ranks below the U.S. average in K-12 per-pupil spending. Carlos Velado, Canyon’s computer teacher, was one of the few teachers assigned to his classroom Friday morning and watched the rally from inside his classroom. ‘There was tremendous support,’ he said. Even though the booster club ultimately pays for all the extras at Canyon, including a computer teacher, Velado is concerned about the proposed budget cuts in other schools. Several parents commented that the demonstration was a wonderful civics lesson for students because they used their First Amendment right to speak up against a government budget that affects them and their future. Teachers from Revere Middle School protested at three different sites: Sunset at Mandeville Canyon, Allenford in front of the school, and on San Vicente at 26th Street. ‘It’s tragic we have to do this to get people to pay attention,’ said eighth-grade math teacher Steve Anderson. He noted that the clerical staff, substitute teachers and all of the sister unions also supported the demonstration. Revere UTLA (United Teachers of Los Angeles) union representative and seventh-grade science teacher Kim Uchida commented that most of the people driving by honked their horns. ‘They’ve been very supportive,’ she said. ‘Hundreds of people have signed a petition [protesting education cuts].’ P.E. teacher Paul Foxson worried about the possibility of a one-percent teacher pay cut, losing buy-back days and teaching positions being cut. He is also concerned about losing after- school programs because LAUSD could rent fields to other groups for a higher fee. ‘They are looking for money in any corner they can find,’ Foxson said. ‘The ultimate party that gets affected is the kids. It’s critical that kids have the best learning environment they can have.’ Although Palisades High’s teachers will not suffer a pay cut because the school is fiscally independent, there is worry that budget cuts could increase class sizes. ‘I don’t consider this an LAUSD or a union thing,’ said English teacher Dennis Danzinger. ‘It’s statewide. If cuts come through, class sizes will increase.’ When students arrived at PaliHi Friday, they were given the governor’s phone number, and many called immediately to protest any proposed cuts. ‘It’s important to send a message,’ said ninth-grade English teacher Sissel Hawks. ‘We need to make education a priority and not only give it lip service. It’s a message for our students that they need to stand up, too.’ (Additional reporting by KATIE SPARKS, DEBBIE ALEXANDER and THERESA HEIM-KILKOWSKI.)

When David Williams learned he was chosen to receive the 2008 Mort Farberow Businessperson of the Year Award, the lifelong resident of Pacific Palisades was both touched and excited. ‘It’s like I’ve come full circle,’ Williams said, ‘because when Mort died I was the one who proposed that we have an award in his honor. So to win it myself is a huge thrill. I only wish I could be there to accept it in person.’ Williams, the personal chef and camp manager for heavyweight boxing champion Wladimir Klitschko of Ukraine, left for Austria on May 24 for a seven-week training camp and therefore will miss tonight’s Chamber of Commerce’s installation dinner at the Riviera Country Club. Klitschko is slated to defend his IBF, IBO and WBO belts against Tony Thompson on July 12 in Hamburg, Germany. He has not lost a fight since Williams joined his team three years ago. ‘Just being around this guy is inspiring because he’s so dedicated to his craft,’ Williams said. ‘He takes great care of himself and he’s very bright. He’s always learning new things.’ Now in its sixth year, the Farberow award was established in memory of the popular Chamber president and former Citizen of the Year, who owned and managed Mort’s Palisades Deli with his wife, Bobbie, for close to 30 years. The award emphasizes three things Mort held dear: community, Chamber and children. ‘Originally, I tried to have the award presented at the Citizen of the Year dinner, but I really wanted it to be special,’ said Williams, who said he is proud to join past winners Bob Benton, Bob Sharka, Roberta Donohue, Cheryel Kanan and Sam Lagana. ‘We got Bobbie’s advice on what the criteria should be and I took it from there.’ Williams is the owner and head chef of Mogan’s Caf’ on Palisades Drive. He holds the distinction of being the only Chamber of Commerce member to serve as board president for two non-consecutive terms. He played a significant role in bringing holiday decorations to the business district every December and chaired and/or co-chaired events such as the Auto Show, Moonlight Fall Festival, Taste of the Palisades and Holiday Ho!Ho!Ho! He helped push through the Chrysalis Street Maintenance Program and, in 2004, came up with the idea for Movies in the Park, now a popular August event. ‘I had such a great childhood here, I enjoy living here and I feel extremely lucky to have my business here,’ said Williams, who graduated from Palisades High in TK. ‘It’s a real advantage to have grown up here because I think you have a better sense of what the community needs.’ Williams, a big believer in giving back to the community, has done so is by coaching Palisades High’s boys varsity and junior varsity soccer teams, but his commitment to Klitschko contributed to his decision to resign in April after the Dolphins missed the playoffs for the first time in his 15 seasons. ‘It took me a long time to make the decision to step down,’ Williams admitted. ‘I did it because the season is six months and with my schedule, there’s no doubt I would be gone for some of it and that’s not fair to the kids. It was a great run and I think the program is well-established.’ Williams won the Community Council’s Community Service Award in 2006 and described the experience as ‘humbling.’ He’s equally dedicated to his latest honor. He arranged for his daughters Sarah (16) and Hannah (13), to accept the award in his absence and has shot a video in Europe to be shown at tonight’s dinner. ‘To have my name associated in this way with Mort Farberow means a lot because he did so much for our town,’ Williams said. ‘I know everyone who has won this award and it’s nice to be part of that group.’