Gigi St. John Miller celebrated her first birthday in an unusual way by having the party at the place she was born: Fire Station 69 at Sunset and Carey. Last November 22, Gigi made a dramatic and “untimely” entrance into the world in the front seat of a Suburban parked at the rear of the fire station’right into the arms of Paramedic John Keys. At the time, her parents, Ram and Carolyn Miller, were living on Beirut while their house on Embury was under construction. Having been induced for her previous two children, Caroline was in no hurry to get to the hospital when her contractions began. She decided to take a shower first. Her husband wondered if that was a good idea, but didn’t argue, and they began their trip to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica at 1:35 a.m. They were on Sunset when Carolyn said that the baby was coming “now,” so Ram pulled into the fire station and called on the emergency phone located outside the station. Keyes, accompanied by Gary Johnson, opened the back door of the station to find Carolyn giving birth. Keyes delivered the baby. The umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck, but he calmly untangled it and then cut the cord. The baby was then wrapped in blankets and driven with mom in an ambulance to the hospital. While Caroline was recovering in her hospital bed, she thought about her experience. “Originally we were going to call the baby Gigi Christine,” she said, “but I wanted to do something to honor the firemen who helped deliver her, so instead we named her Gigi St. John.” The John comes from “John” Keyes and from Gary “John”son. When a baby isn’t born in a hospital the parents must go to City Hall to get a birth certificate. In order to prove that she was born at the fire station, the Millers took the article about Gigi’s birth from the Palisadian-Post, as well as a bill for the ambulance from the fire department. Gigi’s older brother Jake, 6, who attends Corpus Christi, loves telling the story of his sister’s birth. “One of the most wonderful things about this experience is that others share their labor stories with me,” Caroline said. On December 6, the Millers brought lasagna and salad to Station 69. Brothers Jake, and Cole, 4, joined in the celebration by asking the firemen questions and trying on gear. Baskin- Robbins donated a birthday cake for the party. “We’re planning to make Gigi’s birthday party an annual event,” Keyes told the Post. Ram Miller added, “The guys at the station are terrific, and they helped us before. About three years ago, my son Jake, who is deathly allergic to bees, but we didn’t know it at the time, was stung and started to go into anaphylactic shock. My wife rushed him to the fire station and they saved his life.”

VIEWPOINT

By COLLEEN TURNER Special to the Palisadian-Post “Where else are you going to see nine people standing up to the Pentagon?” I recalled hearing as I rushed by a TV monitor tuned to C-SPAN. We were on a break during the final deliberations of the 2005 Base Closure and Realignment Commission (better known as BRAC) held in August in Arlington, Virginia. The ballroom was filled with governors, senators, representatives, lobbyists and community members. TV viewers were calling into the station to comment on the proceedings. This caller’s comment caught my attention as I moved on to the next of innumerable tasks required of a senior analyst and deputy director of the Commission’s Joint Cross-Service Team. I thought to myself: Yes! That’s exactly the intention of having this Presidential Commission. It provides the kind of checks and balances for keeping our government on a healthy track. It’s an inspiring example of a democratic process in which a diverse group of citizens with proven track records (the nine commissioners), supported by approximately 90 staff, have the power to say “yes” or “no” to the Pentagon, Congress, and even the president. I felt honored to be a part of this process. Compared to those in the past, this BRAC round was exceptionally transparent. In past BRACs, influence tended to be limited to the power brokers like lobbyists and contractors. This BRAC held 20 regional hearings and more than 300 community meetings where local residents could become involved’and they did, sometimes en masse, with demonstrations, flags, T-shirts and parades. Modern technology also enabled the public to review our process on a daily basis. Our Web site at www.brac.gov received more than 25 million hits. The commission also received more than 300,000 pieces of correspondence that were posted in our e-library on the Web site along with our reports. The letters ranged from a young boy worried about his father losing his job at a shipyard to a former president siding with interests contrary to his own state. A research project about inspiring hearts and minds around the globe, sponsored by the Pentagon when I was on active reserve status from 2003-2004, indirectly led to my being identified as a potential candidate for the Commission. This year, on April 24, I got an unexpected call that led to my being selected. The following week, I poured my life into three suitcases and left Pacific Palisades to catch a Sunday evening red-eye for Washington, D.C. On Monday I made it to my first day of work and prepared to be sworn in. This assignment required a six-month commitment with up to half the time spent traveling around the country. Our charge was to evaluate the Pentagon recommendations of military installation closures and realignments, an awesome responsibility that no one took lightly. Commission chairman Anthony Principi had been a former cabinet member (as Secretary of Veterans Affairs). Along with his executive director, Charles Battaglia, they had helped transform the VA from a place veterans too often viewed as where they would go to die into a benchmark of best medical practices. I had personally witnessed the changes over the decades since both my Marine Corps brother and I received our health care there. The other eight Commissioners consisted of three retired generals and an admiral with distinguished military careers, a bipartisan mix of two former Congressmen, a former Presidential Chief of Staff/Secretary of Transportation, and a senior Department of Defense scientist. My team leader was a retired Navy ship captain, and the Review and Analysis Division consisted of retired and active military officers, and other government employees (e.g., GAO, GSA, FAA, EPA, associate analysts and young Congressional staffers’a unique blend of highly competent individuals). As a recently retired Air Force Reserve officer with Air National Guard experience, I was asked to serve as the lead for Reserve Component issues (only blasphemously now referred to as “weekend warriors”). The first two weeks involved preliminary hearings in the House and Senate buildings. It was interesting to witness in-person the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs respond to questions, some of which our analysts had helped develop for the Commissioners. After the hearings, we had to handle an array of administrative tasks and review prior BRAC reports. Coming from California, I had the added burden of finding an apartment and getting settled in a new city. With the help of my daughter, who was in the D.C. area at the time, and some wonderful members of a nearby Methodist church, I was able to quickly move into a lovely apartment in the Del Ray area of Alexandria, only a block from the bus stop and a two-mile ride to my office building. From the minute the extraordinarily complex 190 recommended realignments and closures of military installations were released by the Department of Defense on May 13, we were constantly on task to meet the legislatively mandated September deadline for our report to President Bush. My assignments took me to North Carolina, Oklahoma, Nevada, Colorado, and even back to California. While the travel was extremely demanding, I appreciated that without BRAC, I might never have visited the fascinating National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City featuring former Palisadians like Will Rogers and Ronald Reagan or realized where Blackbeard the pirate roamed offshore Beaufort, North Carolina. In Los Angeles at a regional hearing, I was seated across from another former Palisadian, Governor Schwarzenegger, as he was sworn in by our legal counsel. Back at the Commission office in Arlington, I facilitated meetings with community and state government representatives from Arkansas, Texas, Michigan and Montana. The country never looked so big to me and I had never realized just how many military installations there are in the U.S. and its territories. The Joint Cross-Service Team had responsibility for nearly two-thirds of the recommendations, ranging from hospitals, depots and laboratories to training and education facilities. Discussions about joint training of cooks and chaplains provided both amusement and a high degree of frustration. It wasn’t hard to see why so many wars are fought about religion and why good food for the troops is a priority. I was directly responsible for the analysis of recommendations that facilitated Department of Defense savings of $2.2 billion involving 10,000 personnel in 25 states. I dealt with members of Congress and senior Department of Defense officials, set up and contributed to formal hearings, and wrote and presented nationally televised decision briefings for the commissioners. During the final deliberations, when my turn came to testify, the modifications I recommended were questioned by one of the commissioners and the motion was tabled with a request for more information. I was called out to handle the instant influx of communication and it felt as if the entire room was staring at me. A Texas senator requested an immediate meeting to discuss my proposal that two units slated to go to Texas remain in Colorado and Georgia, their respective areas. Several hours later the drama was resolved by an 8-0 vote (with one recusal) and my short-lived notoriety was over. We often heard claims and read various complaints in the newspapers about political bias in this process. With great conviction I can say that these commissioners worked exhaustively hard to thoughtfully consider every angle of the recommendations and to represent the best interests of the American people. Admittedly I was disappointed at times in some of the people and decisions made, but so was everybody else because we disagreed about priorities. That’s how a participatory process works. Also, I had a chance to see firsthand how our military, Congress, and local communities interface. Sometimes I was inspired and at other times disgusted. I developed a new appreciation for the law and even for lawyers because our general counsel and his staff of two attorneys lent a tone of impeccability to the entire process. No doubt my time with the Commission will stand out as a highlight experience of my life, one in which I can say that noble ideals were honored and realized. The 2005 BRAC process ended with the two-volume report being signed off by the president and uncontested by Congress within the 45-day allotted time limit. Eighty-six percent of the Pentagon recommendations were approved, for an estimated savings of $35.6 billion over 20 years, although elation over the savings was dampened for some by the current costs of war in Iraq. The process (and a copy of the actual report) was recently featured in the new TV show “Commander In Chief.” I thought the show did a good job of representing the most important aspects of the process. And I found it interesting that the fictionalized president allowed her home-town submarine base to close in the same state as the one we kept a submarine base open. Even Hollyweird, as some of my more conservative colleagues prefer to describe it, can serve to model noble ideals. (Colleen Turner, a lieutenant colonel, USAF Reserve (Ret.), is a native Palisadian and Palisades High School graduate [’69] who earned her Ph.D. in social welfare from UCLA. She is currently focusing on writing and speaking on the topic “Best Practices for Inspiring Hearts and Minds: A Military Officer’s Quest to Wage Peace.”)

Saving the Santa Monica Mountains would have been enough, or stopping oil drilling on the coast, or eliminating smoking in public places. Any one of these would have been enough. But Marvin Braude did them all, as friends and colleagues attested at his memorial Monday at University Synagogue in Brentwood. Dignitaries offering their respects included the mayor and members of the City Council, city attorney, chief of police, a state senator, a county supervisor, former colleagues, constituents, and his two daughters and their families. The diminutive man who faced down giants in his 32-year career representing the 11th City Council District passed away on December 7, nine months after his wife Marjorie. He was 85. Praised for his farsightedness and dogged persistence, Braude enjoyed repeated re-election victories, before term limits, which afforded him years to pursue ideas that were way ahead of his time. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa chose to describe Braude’s legacy in the context of the Jewish belief in tikkun olam, repairing the world. “We all have responsibility to repair the world through social action,” Villaraigosa said. “Few leave a greater legacy to this than Marvin Braude.” An unlikely politician, Braude had already started several businesses and sold his data systems company to Xerox by the time he decided to run against incumbent councilman Karl Rundberg in 1965. The issue was the threat to extend the proposed Beverly Hills Freeway across the San Diego Freeway, with a bridge across Mandeville Canyon. He and his wife Marjorie, who had moved to California and settled in Brentwood in 1952, were avid cyclists and hikers in the Santa Monica Mountains. Braude devoted much of his career to protecting these areas from exploitation and was a major force behind the creation of the National Recreation Area. Certainly for Palisadians, Braude’s 20-year effort to stop Occidental Petroleum from drilling oil along the local beaches remains a precious legacy. His colleague on city council for 19-1/2 years Zev Yaroslavsky cited their collaboration to control real estate development and to stop coastal oil drilling in the city as “the most fulfilling experiences of my own public service career. “Our successful battle in 1988 to stop an insidious oil drilling scheme….would have been impossible without his longstanding and often lonely crusade.” In his commitment to the environment, Braude eschewed the internal combustine engine, electing to ride his bike in the Palisades’ annual Fourth of July parade, and commuting downtown in his EV electric car. Indeed, Braude was unflappingly independent. His daughter Ann, who was 9 years old when her father entered politics, conveyed his philosophy. “Daddy was convinced that given research and access to the best information available, he could determine what was right.” Senator Sheila Kuehl commended Braude for leading by example. “His calm, methodical approach to laying the groundwork, coupled with building support, was his way of getting it done.” Despite the protracted battles and frequent defeats, Braude seldom gave up. His 20-year effort to ban cigarette smoking from public offices began in 1973 when he took on the tobacco industry and ended with the citywide ban on smoking in the early 1990s. For Braude there was no time like the present. “This was his primary lesson,” said Charlie Britton, who served as his deputy from 1965 to 1982. “People tend to wait until the weather will get better or until the birds begin to sing, but Braude believed that you start. He was that intuitive political entrepreneur who was willing to make an investment in things and build support.” Braude was also a champion of citizen participation, recalled his colleague Terry Cooper, a professor of public policy and development at USC, where Braude was a “distinguished practitioner in residence” after he retired from city government in 1997. Cooper, who was an organizer for the United Methodist Church in the Pico-Union area of Los Angeles, recalled a telling city council meeting he attended in the 1960s. “Speakers from the area, which is made up of mostly by poor Latinos, Asians and gangs, and slum housing, appeared before the council to testify. While the council in those days tended to brush these people off, Braude protested. ‘No, give them more time. They need to be heard.’ “In 1996, when a resolution was first introduced to form city neighborhood councils, there were seven signatures, and Braude’s was at the top of the list,” Cooper added. “‘I want to see this system allow more time for people to be heard,’ Braude said.” Neighborhood councils were adopted in charter reform in 1999. Braude considered his city his backyard; he was always at home in the city of Los Angeles,”Ann said, adding that her mother and sister got his attention on the weekends, while his colleagues and staff shared him weekdays. “I often wonder how his staff put up with him,” she quipped. Certainly his longtime deputy Cindy Miscikowski, who succeeded him in the 11th District, knew him well. “Marvin was not the typical, back-slapping politician,” she said. “He walked a unique course. Known for being sartorially challenged, she said he distinguished himself with his wardrobe selections’often hopelessly matched jackets and pants’and abstemiousness. “When he invited you to lunch, it was often to share his brown bag lunch in his office: granola, powdered milk, topped off with a cup of Postum. “He was proud of his family and eager to praise Liza’s paintings or Ann’s books, and Marjorie’s accomplishments in developing a domestic violence task force.” The couple met and fell in love while attending University of Chicago. Marvin was studying political science and economics, while Marjorie was in the middle of her medical training. They honeymooned in Yosemite, which sparked their love of California and its natural beauty. Marjorie, practiced psychiatry in Brentwood, sponsored a conference on domestic violence in 1994 and led the Los Angeles Domestic Violence Task Force. In the last few months before his death, Braude somewhat diminished in health, enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren, baby Benjamin Braude Adler, who was named after Marvin’s father, and Emma, who soon learned her place in the family. “You are Emma and I am grandpa Marvin,” he would repeat and repeat. With no models nor mentors himself, Marvin Braude was a mentor to many, and in his memory is the source of many lessons.

“You’ve Got Mail!” is the familiar greeting that alerts America Online users to their latest e-mail delivery. Many have come to rely on that message, or at least look forward to seeing the raised flag on the iconic mailbox, yet another sign of a letter in the inbox. The same is true when it comes to “old-fashioned” mail delivery, except that it’s a little more personal. We depend on and, oftentimes, look forward to seeing the familiar face of our regular mail carrier who greets us with a neat pile of letters or tucks them into the box or slot and waves from the sidewalk. The regularity, the routine, the reliability is something we count on. Except that lately, in Pacific Palisades, things have been a little “off.” Residents have called and written letters to the Palisadian-Post, complaining about late, inconsistent delivery, and delayed or waylaid mail. On Tuesday, Sheryl Gardiner, officer in charge at the Palisades Post Office, and Postal Service spokesman Larry Dozier sat down to discuss these issues with the Post. Gardiner, who has worked in the postal service for 29 years, is on special assignment here until postmaster Joe Harris returns or another postmaster is assigned. “I’ve come in to identify the issues that are resulting in the service concerns that have been brought to my attention,” said Gardiner, who started here on October 12. “So whether I’m going to be here to troubleshoot and address and fix [the problems], or be here beyond that point has not been specified. So we just treat it as if I’m here to stay.” Gardiner came from the Wagner Branch in Los Angeles, and had previously served as officer in charge at the Gardena post office, at the Palos Verdes post office, and worked in Beverly Hills and Lakewood before that. “Sheryl has a knack for fixing problems. She’s a troubleshooter,” Dozier said. “We’re concerned about this office and the community. We’re trying to get the best person to get a hand on it and then handle it.” Palisades customers began contacting Gardiner with concerns during her first week on the job, which she said has helped her identify some of the factors resulting in these delivery problems. However, she emphasized that the issues did not arise overnight and will require some time to fix. “There’s been a change in staffing and personnel,” Gardiner said, referring specifically to the retirement during the last two years of two supervisors and the postmaster prior to Harris. “Some of the basic expectations either have not been effectively communicated or they’ve been lost in the transition. So, what I’ve been trying to do is train, develop, educate and reinforce the basic expectations that are going to result in service that the community used to receive a few years back.” She cited these internal concerns’the loss of focus on basic postal service rules and guidelines, and lack of communication among managers, supervisors, carriers and customers’as the primary factors affecting the Palisades service. Other factors include absentees, or employees who are absent because of illness or injury and whose routes have to be covered by their co-workers. Gardiner has approximately 45 mail carriers to deliver 28 routes in the Palisades. When an employee falls ill, Gardiner said, “the regular carriers will deliver their [own] areas’and they’re normally done by 4 p.m.’but because one of their co-workers is absent, they need to fill in and deliver an [extra] hour or two, which is exactly what results in the great majority of late delivery.” Gardiner has hired three new carriers in the last two months to address the late-hour delivery. However, because these new employees don’t receive their uniforms right away and are dressed in civilian clothing, customers have had trouble identifying them as mail carriers, especially after dark. “There are steps we can take to resolve that,” Gardiner said. “We can provide them with a particular piece of the uniform’a hat or shirt. They must be wearing their identification badge so customers can identify them.” In some cases, Gardiner said, if a mail carrier is unable to deliver mail because of restrictions relating to, for example, an injury, “we provide work for them in another area where they can assist and serve customers.” A carrier might work temporarily as a greeter at the postal store on Sunset. Those delivering mail are scheduled to leave the carrier annex on La Cruz beginning at 10:30 a.m., with others to follow at 11 a.m. and noon. “[The departure time of carriers] really depends on the composition of their delivery route and the volume of mail that that particular route received,” Gardiner said. “We have transportation that arrives throughout the morning, continually bringing us the mail so that we can continually process and sort it, preparing it for delivery.” A minimum of four trucks arrives each morning from the Los Angeles Processing and Distribution Center at Florence and Central, just south of Downtown. Gardiner said that the postal service adjusted the arrival times following the closure of the Marina Processing and Distribution Center in mid-July, so that the Palisades office would still receive its mail at the same time. “It’s rare that we receive the mail extremely late,” said Gardiner, who has worked in other offices affected by the closure of the Marina del Rey location and has not noticed a change in service. Dozier agreed that the fact that all Palisades mail now goes through the Los Angeles center is “not a reason why you run into late mail deliveries here.” He said that the postal service consolidated operations into the large L.A. center “to cut down on transportation, equipment and employee costs.” Some of the machinery and employees were transferred to the L.A. center, which “is large enough to handle Los Angeles in addition to everything that the Marina was handling.” Gardiner said that her last first-class mail is scheduled to arrive in the Palisades at approximately 8:30 a.m., so “the ideal is for our carriers to be coming into work at 8/8:30 and be back [from their routes] by 4:30/5 p.m.” She added that last Friday, the carriers returned to the office at 6:10 p.m., which is an improvement compared to past weeks (some Post readers say they have often received mail after 8 p.m.). “I’m seeing a turnaround and I’m optimistic,” Gardiner said. “I see employees who are committed to improving things and getting back to the way it was. I see improvements in different areas as I’m addressing the concerns with the customers. I think [the improvements] will be more visible and more obvious, probably after the holidays when the volume has dissipated.” Dozier, who has worked in the postal service for 35 years, agreed. “Sheryl has been given this assignment right in the middle of our busiest time of year, so some of the changes she has implemented’perhaps you won’t see them until the end of January because of this extreme mail volume.” Gardiner added, “I do want to apologize to any customers I haven’t gotten to yet.” She suggested that customers call her at 454-3475 or write to her at the post office, 15243 La Cruz.

The Palisades Charter High School Board of Directors voted unanimously Tuesday night to approve fundraising for a project that could transform the Stadium by the Sea along Temescal Canyon. The proposed project will consist of (1) replacing the existing natural grass playing field with a soft and durable Field Turf synthetic grass and (2) replacing the current dirt running track with a rubberized all-weather surface. Organizers estimate the project will cost $1.3 million and construction could ideally begin after graduation next June and be completed in time for the start of the football season in September. “Palisades is a great high school with a bright future and it deserves to have a quality field and track,” said project co-leader Jim Bailey, a local commercial real estate agent whose daughter, Laura, was the Pali soccer team’s goalie for three years before she graduated in 2004. Chosen by more and more high schools, colleges and professional stadiums, Field Turf is a new generation of Astroturf that is far softer than previous materials and produces fewer injuries than natural grass fields. “Not only are these types of fields better for the players but they actually make financial sense,” added Bob Jeffers, the other project co-leader, who won a Community Sparkplug Award in 2004 for his leadership of a PRIDE landscaping project. “Schools all over the country are putting these fields in” (including Calvary Christian School in the Highlands). Because the current stadium field is used by various school sports (football in the fall, soccer in the winter, track and field and softball in the spring), as well as outside entities, the grass must be replaced every year. “Instead of the field becoming bare and muddy and being closed for reseeding all summer, the synthetic field will look and feel perfect no matter how much abuse it takes,” Bailey said. “Pali’s sister school, Granada Hills Charter High, just completed this exact project and we’re planning on bringing over their entire construction team to do our field.” Bailey and Jeffers made an hour-long presentation at the Board’s previous meeting November 29 in the school library. Larry Foster of Bellinger Foster Steinmetz, an outdoor landscaping firm, attended that meeting and gave a short presentation on Field Turf technology. If all goes well with the project’s fundraising, PaliHi will rent out the new field by the hour to local sports organizations such as AYSO, Pop Warner football, soccer and lacrosse club teams and even summer camps, to help recover the cost of the project over time. The field will be marked with permanent lines for a variety of sports. In addition, an all-weather track would allow to school to host invitational track meets, bringing in additional revenue. Also present two weeks ago to endorse the proposed project was Chris Davis, director of athletics at Granada Hills, who showed a five-minute DVD and called synthetic grass “a practical, logical improvement, not a luxury item.” He said his school’s field has become a source of pride for the Highlanders and that students are more enthusiastic about P.E. One concern the Board had was that the new field surface might be damaged by the annual Fourth of July fireworks, but Jeffers said he researched the issue and learned that the field could be safely tarped for such occasions. Board members then inquired about the costs for water and maintenance at Stadium by the Sea, which currently run between $35,000 and $50,000 a year. A synthetic field, Jeffers pointed out, would eliminate about 85 percent of those expenses. PaliHi principal Dr. Gloria Martinez, the administration, and the athletic department “are all solidly behind the effort,” Jeffers told the Palisadian-Post. “Generous individuals have already stepped forward to help us launch this project and we’ll be reaching out to the community over the next few months to raise the necessary funds.” Bailey said the school is even open to the possibility of naming rights to the new stadium. Those interested in donating to the project should contact either Bailey (phone: 468-7700, ext. 391 or e-mail: bailey@westmac.com), or Bob Jeffers (phone: 230-8914 or e-mail: forcopy@aol.com.).