By KAREN WILSON Palisadian-Post Contributor The road to Broadway stardom may be long, but one young Palisadian has already started the journey. Helene Yorke, 20, spent the summer making her professional acting debut as a member of the resident company at Music Theater of Wichita, which boasts one of the top summer stock programs for collegiate performers in the country. “It was awesome,” she says of the experience. “Best summer of my life.” For most people, Kansas isn’t the stuff of dreams. Then again, Yorke isn’t most people. Singing and dancing since age 3, she cut her teeth at Palisades Charter High School, performing leads in “Les Mis’rables” and “Crazy for You.” (Fellow students voted Yorke “Drama Queen” in the class polls.) After graduating in 2003, the honors student headed to the University of Michigan (UM), renowned for its top-notch theater program. In her first year at UM, Yorke was the only freshman cast in a featured role in the spring musical production of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” in which she played a member of the Soul Trio, a Supremes-esque girl group. As a sophomore, she understudied the roles of Cassie and Val in “A Chorus Line,” another step up the speaking-parts food chain. After “Chorus” had finished its run, Yorke began weighing summer options. In theater circles, it is widely held that a “summer stock” experience’when amateur actors spend time in a professional environment’is an important step for collegians. “If you perform a show for school, it’s more about that educational process,” Yorke says. “Summer stock is a nice bridgeway before doing Broadway or a company residency.” With that decided, she set her sights on Wichita and St. Louis MUNY, two theater companies whose stock programs are highly regarded. Yorke’s first lesson on the ins and outs of professional acting came during the cattle call: “To stage actors, auditioning is a job.” And it’s tough’her St. Louis tryout called for Yorke to sing 16 bars of music in front of an audience comprised solely of her competition. (“During auditions, I don’t worry about what other people are doing… if you’re worried about other people, you’re not growing.”) She nailed it. “Nerves are the anticipation of failure,” Yorke says, “a pointless emotion.” Her unique audition arsenal included songs from the obscure, difficult-to-sing Broadway shows “Mack and Mabel” and “Flora, the Red Menace.” At the end of the process, Yorke was offered jobs at both Wichita and St. Louis MUNY. She took a road less traveled and turned down more prestigious St. Louis. “Wichita offered me the role of Val in ‘Chorus Line,’ and a chance to perform in all five of their summer shows,” she explains. “At MUNY, I would have only been able to appear in three musicals. I would’ve gotten my Actors’ Equity card there”‘all actors appearing with that company must be members of the stage actors’ Equity guild'”but then I would’ve been forced to turn professional, and I never would have been able to do summer stock. I want time to learn more [as a student] before I turn pro.” Out of Wichita’s 500 applicants, 350 were invited to audition, and from that group, just 22 were invited to Kansas. Yorke was “thrilled” to get the job. “What I love about theater is that it’s a constant learning process,” she adds. “Summer stock is a natural progression.” Yorke arrived in Wichita prepared to work: “We staged five musicals in 10 weeks.” She was featured in the ensembles of “Seussical,” based on the books of Dr. Seuss; “Aida,” adapted by Elton John from Verdi’s opera; Mary Hart’s “Once Upon a Mattress,” and composer Maury Yeston’s “Phantom.” And, of course, “Chorus Line,” directed by Kerry Casserly, a disciple of the late Bob Fosse who had also directed Yorke in the UM incarnation. “We’d rehearse each show for 10 days,” Yorke recalls. “And we performed for paying audiences Wednesdays through Sundays. Often, we’d practice an upcoming production all day, then go out and perform a different show at night.” She had no problem memorizing lines and dance routines, but Yorke found overlapping “hard…the nice thing about a long rehearsal period is that you develop a relationship with the show and characters. In Wichita, there was no chance to do this. It was an enormous amount of material in such a short time.” (The average Broadway show has a longer rehearsal period than Yorke’s entire tenure in Kansas.) Well-known actors flew in for each production, and Yorke shared the stage with theatrical heavyweights such as Darren Ritchie, late of Broadway’s “Little Shop of Horrors,” and Nancy Lemenager, recently of the Great White Way’s “Movin’ Out” and “Never Gonna Dance.” “I remember sitting in audiences and idolizing these actors. The biggest learning experience of the summer was seeing their processes, how they prepared,” says Yorke. Another eye-opener was audience reaction to “Chorus Line,” which contains frank discourse on sexuality. “My character’s solo song was called ‘Tits and Ass,'” Yorke says. “And we were in the Bible Belt! We cut swear words from the show, but there was still local outcry. And the part they were really complaining about was my character! It was interesting, to say the least.” Asked to describe an average Wichita rehearsal period, Yorke can hardly contain her excitement: “We’d spend two days dancing and stage blocking, and four or five days learning the music. Then sitzprobe [singing to full orchestral accompaniment for the first time], and a full dress rehearsal on Tuesday night, which was always a fiasco! On Wednesday afternoon, we’d fix stuff that had gone wrong during full dress, then on Wednesday night, we opened to paying audiences.” Those spectators often sold out the company’s 2,500-seat theater. “I was about to sing my solo in front of 2,500 people, and I was like, ‘Yeah. Okay,'” she says. “I thought, ‘I got here, and I’m gonna take the most I can from it.’ No nerves.” (For the record, the Wichita Eagle’s critic gave her “special kudos.”) The connections Yorke made with fellow actors will prove invaluable. Wichita alums include Tony award winner Kristin Chenoweth and nominee Kelli O’Hara. Her inner circle includes UM roommate Andrew Keenan-Bolger, who originated the role of JoJo in the original Broadway company of “Seussical.” “The guy playing JoJo in our production needed pointers,” Yorke recalls. “I was holding out the phone saying, ‘Do you want to talk to the original?'” Making the trek to see “Chorus Line,” meanwhile, were dad Rhos, who works in software; mom Andrea, a seller at Village Books, and Helene’s grandmother. Along with her younger brothers Sudsy and Lance, all are supportive of Yorke’s career’and her recent name change. “It was time for a stage name,” she says (her legal moniker is Helene Dyke). “Yorke is my great-grandmother’s maiden name. My grandma gave me permission.” Next up? Two more years at UM, and then’who knows?’Broadway. “My goal is to be happy doing what I love,” she says. “And to win a Tony.” Careful, Helene. You might just achieve both.

Theater Review

There’s something intriguing about a play that promises to simulate New York’s East River in one of the largest sets ever created for the Ahmanson, where you might get splashed as the characters cannonball into a six-ft.-deep orchestra pit filled with more than 10,000 gallons of water. And there’s something remarkable about experiencing the depth and height of James Noone’s richly textured “Dead End” set’four-story brick tenement buildings fitted with fire escapes, and juxtaposed with a marble Beaux Arts apartment complex. But as I sat in the front row of the Center Theatre Group’s revival production of Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 broadway hit, with a towel draped across my lap, the awe of the dramatic design quickly gave way to the baffling absence of a stimulating story and cohesive performances. By the first, early intermission, not much had happened at the wharf overlooking the East River except for a playful and energetic water show by the roughhousing Dead End Kids. Oh, and gangster Baby Face Martin (Jeremy Sisto), a former Dead End Kid, had returned to his old turf with the sentimental, albeit suspicious, look of a man seeking to reclaim something he lost. The gimpy gentle-looking guy sketching in the corner (also a former Dead End Kid) had yet to make the point of his character’s presence known. All of the main characters in “Dead End” have lost something’a mother, a childhood, an opportunity to escape the slums, a sense of hope. But while we sympathize with Tommy (Ricky Ullman), the leader of the Dead End Kids, whose boyish charm and honorable strength inspire his less fortunate and less brave friends, we don’t really understand or care about the pathetic Gimpty (Tom Everett Scott), an out-of-work architect who dreams of revitalizing the slum with a community housing project. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Kingsley (“Men in White”) was apparently “the first American dramatist to bring the mean streets of modern city life to the Broadway stage” by illuminating the devastating realities of the Depression, including the filthy living conditions of America’s poor and the common criminal fate of slum kids. When “Dead End” premiered on Broadway in the midst of the Depression, it earned one of the longest runs in Broadway history at the time, and had a profound social impact; First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt saw the production three times and FDR subsequently created a commission on slum housing. Unfortunately, the play’s political message fails to grip us, even though the issues of poverty and class divisions are particularly relevant in Los Angeles, which has the highest recidivism rate in the country. Perhaps the problem is that we aren’t moved by the characters or their co-existence in the spectacular setting. The mother-son relationship between Baby Face Martin and Mrs. Martin (Joyce Van Patten) feels forced and hastily developed. And the unbelievable love affair between Gimpty and Kay (Sarah Hudnut) is even more unemotional. One relationship that does work is that of Tommy and his protective, thick-skinned sister Drina (Kathryn Hahn), who struggles with the responsibility of raising him. Hahn and Ullman establish a believeable relationship that helps develop their individual characters. We see where Tommy learns his values and we therefore believe in his sincerity when he faces a big decision that decides his fate. Drina seems to be the best role model for Tommy’better than the depressing Gimpty and Baby Face Martin, who represent two different “futures” for Dead End Kids. The other notable performance is that of Sisto (of “Six Feet Under”) who humanizes his stereotypical gangster character through his abrupt and awkward interactions with people, revealing some of his underlying pain. One of these exchanges is with his ex-flame Francey (Pamela Gray). In a well choreographed scene, Sisto and Gray momentarily reconnect as they move around the stage’just a few feet between them’and dance out the sorrows of their fates. The only problem is that this emotionally jarring scene feels disconnected from the rest of the play. As the inaugural production of the Center Theatre Group’s new artistic director Michael Ritchie, “Dead End” might send the wrong message to dedicated Music Center theatergoers, especially if the play truly is what Ritchie called “a personal calling card of my theatrical taste.” With a cast of 42 actors (including 14 students from the USC School of Theatre) and an elaborate set that’s earned more talk than the actual production, the show is startlingly empty in its meaning. And even if the production succeeds in entertaining an audience with its live “East River,” one has to wonder if that much water wouldn’t be better utilized somewhere else, like in water-deprived California. “Dead End,” directed by Nicholas Martin, runs through October 16 at the Ahmanson Theatre, 135 N. Grand Ave. Tickets are $20 to $75. Contact: (213) 628-2772 or CenterTheatreGroup.org.

A photograph of the ancient ruins at Angkor Wat, capturing the spirituality and mysterious beauty of Cambodia’s famed temples, hangs in grim contrast to the other pictures in a new exhibition, ones that speak to the unspeakable about this country’s recent past. “Encountering the Cambodian Genocide,” composed of photographs and essays by Chantal Prunier, a Palisades resident, opens on September 15 at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge, led by despot Pol Pot, seized power in Cambodia. This marked the beginning of a reign of terror that resulted in the most widespread genocide of modern times. Forty percent of the population perished in four years. Prunier’s exhibit includes 17 of her photographs taken during a trip to Cambodia last spring, along with 10 essays she wrote. She visited Tuol Sleng, the most notorious prison camp and execution center from the genocide years, now open to the public as a museum in Phnom Penh, and the infamous “killing fields” of Choeung Ek, a soccer-field sized site nine miles outside Phnom Penh, containing mass graves, slightly sunken, for perhaps 20,000 Cambodians, many of whom were tortured before being killed. The photograph of Angkor Wat is the only one in the show that doesn’t pertain to the genocide. “The exhibit starts with that picture because we begin by talking about the history of Cambodia,” says Prunier. “A lot of people go to Cambodia these days, but they don’t go to Phnom Penh, they go to these beautiful ancient temples. They are stunning, but that was 1,000 years ago.” Prunier’s own travels to Cambodia, a country she’s visited four times in the past seven years, began with just such an isolated visit to the famed temples, but where she encountered the country’s recent dark past via her guide, a person who revealed his role as a Khmer Rouge soldier. “It took him a day or two to talk about it,” recalls Prunier. “He spoke of having done horrible things, but he said what they all say: he was forced to do it.” The Khmer Rouge leaders, in keeping with their perverse revolutionary goals, broke up families and sent children as young as three to camps where they would work and be indoctrinated. In order to serve the revolution, disciples needed to renounce material possessions and leave their families. Submitting to discipline and confessing one’s faults was essential to gaining status as a “truly devoted.” All towns and villages were emptied with huge populations redeployed to work in the fields. Those who resisted the new order were shot to death. Members of the former government, intellectuals, professors and doctors were summarily executed, followed by a second wave of killings that pinpointed teachers, nurses, craftsman and monks. The new recruits who carried out these murders were often just teenagers. “That is what is really haunting about present-day Cambodia,” says Prunier, referring to how most of the Khmer Rouge perpetrators, people who committed unimaginable acts of savagery, were never prosecuted and are free today. “When Cambodians walk in the street and see a person 45 years or older, they know that person could have been one of those people who killed others.” Prunier, who grew up in the Burgundy region of France, says her background predisposed her to having a fascination with Southeast Asia, particularly Cambodia, a former French colony. A keen interest, also, in social and political issues, led her to delve into the subject of the Khmer Rouge and the horror they inflicted on Cambodia. Prunier describes her foray into photography and journalism as her second career. She attended college at Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Dijon, France, and Harvard Business School. Her first career in business was put on hiatus after she married and had children. She and her husband, Michael Grindon, and their three children moved to the Palisades from the East Coast 14 years ago. When she talked about her Cambodian research and shared photographs with friends, some of whom are board members at the Holocaust Museum, they encouraged the idea of mounting an exhibition. “Man’s inhumanity to man crosses all traditional boundaries,” writes Rachel Lithgow, executive director for the L.A. Holocaust Museum, a museum founded in 1961 by survivors of the Jewish Holocaust. Recalling a genocide’even one that took place 35 years after the Holocaust in another corner of the world’ is central to the museum’s mission to commemorate and remember. In fact, one case in the exhibition is devoted to placing images of the Cambodian genocide side-by-side with photographs from the Holocaust, illuminating their disturbing similarities. Prunier’s photographs are accompanied by in-depth essays chronicling the history of Cambodia and the rise and fall of the Khmer Rouge (the country was “liberated” by the Vietnamese in 1979). Text about the atrocities, for which there is extensive documentation as well as oral histories by survivors, uncovers acts of extreme cruelty. At Tuol Sleng, one of 20 known prison camps where torture was performed on a daily basis, women arriving with young children would be held by the hair while a game was made of tossing their babies up in the air and shooting them. Prunier describes how killings became intensely physical as ammunition became scarce. “They didn’t want to use their precious bullets, so they would do horrible things, like smashing children’s heads against tree trunks,” she says. Although 60 percent of Cambodian’s current population of 12 million were born after the end of the genocide, the scars are still very much present, says Prunier. “In Cambodia, you can’t walk down the street and look anyone in the eye because they are still scared. There are all kinds of things they remember.” The exhibition continues through November 15 at the Museum of the Holocaust, 6435 Wilshire Blvd. (one block east of Fairfax). Contact: (323) 651-3704. (Palisadian-Post Intern Nikila Sri-Kumar, a student at Harvard Westlake, contributed to this story.)

Theater Review

War lasts a long time. It lingers in the air long after the final troops return home and others have been laid to rest. It visits soldiers in their sleep and haunts families still waiting for their boy to return’years later. Such is the postwar atmosphere in which Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” is set. The 1947 family drama preceded “Death of a Salesman” by two years, establishing some of the themes that Miller would further develop in his later works. The Theatre Palisades production, directed by Sherry Coon and performed by a talented cast, successfully captures the multi-layered traumatic effects of loss on one family struggling to face the ghosts of their past. The show runs through October 9 at Pierson Playhouse. The entire play is appropriately set in the Keller’s cozy backyard, symbolic of Midwestern comfort and hospitality. It’s a gathering place for friends and family who pop in and out, expected or not. A tall, white lattice fence encloses the yard, which connects to a dusty blue two-story house with white trim, flower boxes in the window sills, a swinging screen door and a porch complete with a rocking chair. Designed by Sherman Wayne, this set earns applause at first sight. Joe Keller (Jack Winnick) and his wife, Kate (Joanna Churgin), don’t seem to mind living in the bubble of their Ohio backyard, where they can keep a disturbing family secret close to home. Kate is in deep denial over the loss of their son, Larry, who’s been missing in action for about three years now, and also over their other son Chris’s plan to marry Ann Deever, Larry’s sweetheart. When Chris (Jim Felton) returns home with Ann (Kate Woodruff), a tree planted in Larry’s honor has fallen over, and everybody reads some symbolism into it. “We all got hit by the same lightening,” Ann says about Larry’s death. In a poignant twist, her father and Joe were business partners whose company knowingly sold faulty equipment to the Army. However, while Joe managed to avoid prison, her own father is serving time. Ann acts as a sort of peacemaker throughout the play, even though she has questions about Joe’s honor. However, her brother, George (Stephen Peirick), arrives on the scene filled with resentment towards Joe, with the intention of preventing his sister’s marriage to Chris. In the leading roles, Winnick and Churgin deliver powerful and moving performances. As Joe, Winnick crafts a desperate father painfully unable to confront his guilt and express grief over the soldiers who died in airplane crashes caused by his company’s faulty parts. He achieves a delicate balance of pride, playful unease and defensiveness as he inappropriately agrees to play “jail” with the neighborhood kid and attempts to hold down the family fort by ignoring the change around him. Churgin is utterly convincing as a grief-stricken mother who’s overwhelmed with sorrow but also with the burden of her husband’s guilty conscience and her need to protect him. She manipulatively attempts to preserve the past because the painful reality of the present is unbearable. Churgin’s gripping performance makes us feel her pain in a very real way, especially in the scenes where she desperately tries to project her characters’ emotions on others. Through the characters of Chris, Ann and George, we are made to understand that the children of war not only inherit their parents’ suffering but also the guilt of tragic decisions made during wartime. As Ann, Kate Woodruff cleverly portrays a sweet and sensitive but also an assertive young woman who is able to confront Mrs. Keller and stand up for herself under the harsh scrutiny of neighbor Sue Bayliss (Dale Waddington Horowitz). These strong female characters aren’t afraid to put each other in place and challenge the seemingly more dependent male characters. It’s hard to see what Ann loves so much about Chris, but she tells us it’s his honesty and “the way he relaxes me,” and we believe her. Chris, who served as a commander in the war, proves that he loves her by bringing her home to his parents even though he is ashamed that everything about them and their home has remained eerily the same. For Chris, a man’s morals are more significant than family loyalty, which becomes a major conflict for him as the play progresses. In part, his struggle reveals a gap between generations because where his father, of the Depression era, made decisions based on financial concerns and the desire to maintain a successful business to pass on to his son, Chris believes that a man’s morals should guide his actions. But in the Keller world, forgiveness’of oneself and others’is rare, which makes this play a heavy, albeit powerful one. While the characters’ emotions understandably run high, some of their arguments and messages could perhaps be delivered a little more subtlety, with less shouting. Overall, the cohesive production, produced by Shirley Churgin, is one of the best I’ve seen at Pierson Playhouse. The costumes (Sherry Coon), along with the music (designed by Cindy Dellinger and edited by Jeff Scott), transport us directly to the 1940s. It’s also great to see some young talent in the play; Monica Gilsanz played Bert, the neighborhood kid, in last weekend’s performance, and Lili Boyle and Dylan LaRocque will appear in upcoming performances. The play runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. For tickets, call 454-1970 or visit the box office at Pierson Playhouse, 941 Temescal Canyon Rd., Wednesday through Saturday, 3:30 to 6:30 p.m.

On the south side of LAX is an unknown gem of a museum filled with flight attendant outfits, a scanner of the actual voices from the tower tracking in- and outbound planes, and a mural that salutes the Centennial of Flight and the 75th anniversary of the airport. The Flight Path Museum is one of the rare ones that holds the interest of both parents and children. Located in the Imperial Terminal, which was home to World Airways and then the now-defunct MGM Grand Airlines, the museum sits on the tarmac of LAX and provides one of the most accessible public views of jets landing and taking off. Charter flights for teams like the Clippers and Lakers take off from this area, and visitors to the museum have been thrilled to see favorite athletes boarding a plane. On the museum’s floor are five airplane seats facing the windows offering a premier location to watch various jets land and take off on Runway 25 left and 25 right. Those who enjoy the rumble of planes and hearing noise of gigantic outward-bound jets can go outside, practically placing you on the runway. Immediately next door to the museum is the K-9 bomb-sniffing operation. Museum patrons are allowed to stand outside behind the fence and watch the dogs during training. Approximately 50 suitcases are put down and a dog sniffs around each bag. When he finds any suspected contraband, the dog lies down. As a reward, the trainer takes a ball or toy out of his pocket and they play for a few minutes before the dog goes back to work. As children watch the planes, parents will be interested in the collection of 15 black-and white photos taken by the official airport photographer, Wen Roberts. In the 1960s, he took photos of famous people traveling by air. It was a different era, when passengers traveled dressed up in their best clothes. Roberts caught the naughty come-hither look of Jane Mansfield, Marlon Brando’s bored smoldering sexuality and the sweetness of Audrey Hepburn. Another attraction are colorful antique posters the airlines issued to lure passengers to travel. Lee Nicholas, the Flight Path’s executive director, remembers when teachers brought the posters into classrooms that depicted Hawaii and London and other faraway geographic destinations. Travel agents used to put them in windows, but with the advent of Web sites and bookings over the Internet, these artistic posters are no longer created. The history of LAX can be studied through photos. The dedication photo in 1930 shows LAX (then known as Mines Field), a small runway surrounded by open land on all sides. Small private planes went in and out, but there was no commercial traffic because the major airport in the Los Angeles area was in Burbank. About 1940, the name was changed to Los Angeles Muncipal Airport. During World War II, the military used the fields. After 1946, the airport was opened to commercial traffic. A 1961 oil painting shows an era when LAX had almost a regional appearance. A single roadway runs in front of six ticketing and baggage buildings. Originally, a passenger would go to ticketing, then into one of the underground tunnels that led to the satellite oval buildings near the runways to await departure. With the advent of larger planes, the space between ticketing and departure/arrival became unusable and long hallways were built from ticketing to gates. There is a 1/100th scale model of the super-jumbo Airbus A380 jetliner’the first of its kind on display in Southern California, according to Rowena Ake, Flight Path president. “It will hold 800 passengers if they all fly economy,” Nicholas said. “The plane will probably carry closer to 500 to 600 people.” It’s set to arrive at LAX in November 2006, and once again the gates will have to be refigured to accommodate the larger plane. The museum has a real grab-bag of diverse small exhibits. Fine china, linen napkins and real silverware detail the glory days of commercial air flight. A ceiling-to-floor case is filled with models of different aircraft of Southern California and large oil paintings of planes, donated by the Marina City Club. A small room is filled with Flying Tiger memorabilia. Ann Proctor, the head of volunteers, showed a room filled with flight-attendant uniforms. Recently the museum sponsored a fashion show. “We only used the outfits up to 1990,” Proctor said. “After that they were all dark and Navy colors.” The variety and color of the uniforms are amazing. The large flower print of the muumuu’s came from the inception of flights to Hawaii. A bright-green dress with yellow embroidery, complete with gold shoes, was the outfit for the first flights between Mexico and the U.S. Different uniforms are featured throughout the museum and rotated frequently. Currently the entire collection is being catalogued. Carolyn Woods, who was a flight attendant for United Airlines for 44 years, gave the museum every outfit she had been required to wear during those years. Perfectly tailored suits, with size six labels (but looking closer to a size two) hang on a mannequin. Proctor, who was a flight attendant with TWA from 1957 to 1964, confessed, “I was on weight check.” A thin svelte woman, she explained, “It was my first time away from home and I gained some weight. Every time I showed up for work, they made me step on a scale’if they could find me,” she said laughing. Proctor worked with TWA because it was the first airline to allow married attendants. “You had to quit when you got married,” Proctor said. “Some foreign airlines still have that requirement.” There are also some paper stewardess outfits in their collections, which were in vogue for about a year. Once airplanes headed to foreign destinations were in the air, the flight attendants in first class changed into outfits that look a bit like a colorful short toga. “The women who wore them told me they carried scotch tape and scissors,” Proctor said. “They also wore either a body stocking or a pair of shorts underneath.” The museum has a small library with aviation-related technical materials as well as books on commercial and civil aviation. Currently, the library is in the process of being catalogued and put on a database. The plans are to build a respectable research library. This museum will celebrate its second birthday on Wednesday, October 5, with a benefit that will feature news reel footage of Howard Hughes’ famous Spruce Goose airplane. A fully restored TWA Constellation airliner from the 1940s era will be available for guests to tour during the benefit. In addition to all the airline memorabilia, one of the most attractive aspects of Flight Path are the group of volunteers, all of whom have had careers in commercial aviation. At the front were three volunteers, all retired, two of whom had logged over 40 years with the airlines. All were eager to answer questions and share their vast knowledge. Since the museum is new and still relatively unknown, visitors can receive a lot of personal atttention The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays and the first Saturday of each month. School and group tours are available. The location is 6661 W. Imperial Hwy.; admission and parking is free. For driving and parking directions, go to the Web site www.flightpath.us or call 215-5291.