(Editor’s note: This is the third of three articles revisiting World War II through the recollections of three Pacific Palisades veterans. On Saturday, the new WWII Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., will be dedicated. American Legion Post 283 will host a corresponding event to observe the memorial dedication and honor Westside veterans. See story, Page 1.) By BILL BRUNS Managing Editor ‘Out here in the Pacific we have all kinds of heroes,’ wrote Robert Garrick of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in November 1944. ‘However, only a few have stood before high-ranking military officials to be received as heroes because they have been shooting pictures.’ In Garrick’s estimation, Loran (‘Little Smitty’) Smith was that kind of hero, a Navy combat photographer who for nearly three years shot still and motion pictures from aircraft and ships across the Pacific. His daring work not only provided valuable reconnaissance information, but also appeared in newspapers, magazines and newsreels throughout the world. In early 1940, when Smith was a college student in Iowa and a part-time newspaper photographer, he drove out to Los Angeles with three friends, chronicling their adventures for Look magazine. He chose to stay in L.A., working as a photographer until he was called up as a Navy reservist in December 1941 and assigned to Admiral Chester Nimitz’s public relations staff in Hawaii. ‘I understood that meant taking pictures for publication, and I wasn’t going to get them hanging around Pearl Harbor,’ Smith recalled recently at his home in Palisades Bowl. Unafraid of flying (though untrained as an aerial photographer), he volunteered for numerous combat missions, preferring to shoot from a two-man dive bomber that would take off from an aircraft carrier. ‘I sat behind the pilot, in the turret, and we would first drop down from about 10,000 feet to deliver our bomb. I’d try to take some type of picture. Then we’d go back down a second time just to shoot still pictures, ideally flying at 100 to 300 feet elevation because it’s much harder for anti-aircraft gunners to hit a fast, moving target that close. Then we’d come back a third time so I could shoot movie film.’ Smith (5’7′ tall) had to stand up in order to shoot over the side wall. One day, while his bomber was in a dive at Truk, an anti-aircraft shell exploded so close to the plane that the blast blew Smith’s motion picture camera out of his hands and into the sea. ‘When I came out to a carrier, I had to look around for a volunteer pilot,’ Smith observed. ‘Most of them didn’t want to hang around after dropping their bomb.’ Arriving back at the carrier after each mission, Smith would hand his film over to an officer, who would have a messenger fly it on to Pearl Harbor. Alas, whenever his photos were published, Smith was uncredited; the byline would simply read U.S. Navy. And in subsequent years he was never able to track down his negatives. ‘They’re somewhere in Navy files,’ he said, ‘but I found a large number of prints that I was able to donate to the Nimitz Museum in Texas.’ Smith was the admiral’s favorite photographer and would chronicle his activities in Hawaii’everything from playing horseshoes with enlisted men to conversing with President Franklin Roosevelt during a lunch at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. In November 1944, Smith was transferred to the famed Steichen Photo Group in Washington, D.C., and finished out his duty working mostly in the photo lab. ‘I missed out on the end of the war in Japan,’ Smith said, ‘but on the way to Washington I stopped off in Los Angeles and got married.’ His wife, Audrey, died in 1991. Their two sons, Stuart and Scott, both graduated from Palisades High and now live in Montana. After the war, Smith returned to Los Angeles and worked as a contract photographer for Life magazine until 1950, when he became a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Mirror. He took one of his most memorable photos when Nikita Khrushchev visited Fox Studios and watched the filming of ‘Can-Can’ in 1959. ‘I caught Khrushchev with a big smile on his face as he watched the dancers, while his wife is next to him with her typical sour look.’ In 1962, Smith got into the travel agency business, and at 84 he still works part-time doing desktop publishing for Altour International. Despite suffering a stroke three years ago, he remains active in the Masons, the Shriners, the American Legion and the Press Photographers Association of Greater L.A., which honored him last year with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Palisadians Richard and Deborah Hoskin announced the engagement of their daughter, Alana Michelle Hoskin, to Cameron Keith Smith of Seattle. The bride-to-be attended Palisades Elementary, Marlborough School and Villanova University. She and Cameron met at Villanova, where they both graduated in June 2000. Alana is presently a senior consultant for Deloitte Consulting in Seattle. The bridegroom is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Neale Smith of Everett, Washington. He graduated with honors from the University of Washington’s School of Law in June 2003. He is currently completing a degree in taxation and will take the bar exam in July. The couple plan a September wedding at the Bel-Air Bay Club.

By ALYSON SENA Palisadian-Post Staff Writer There’s no place like home, for humans and animals alike. Yet, would you expect your lost bichon fris’ to trek along miles of roadway in danger of being hit by a car or eaten by a coyote in the middle of the night to return home? The O’Neil family thinks their dog, Fluffy, did just that. According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, ‘bichon fris’ translates as ‘curly-haired lapdog’ and is described as ‘any of a breed of small sturdy dogs of Mediterranean origin having a thick wavy white coat.’ Clearly, 4-year-old Fluffy is a survivor. On April 6, the O’Neils’who live in the El Medio bluffs neighborhood’took Fluffy to a ‘play date’ at Scott O’Neil’s parents’ house in Santa Monica. Bill and Fay, who have four dogs of their own, live on Euclid and Alta, just south of San Vicente. When Bill returned home that day, he was unaware that Fluffy was visiting and she bolted out the door. He went looking for her all the way down to Montana Ave. without success, at which point he called the family for help. Scott searched futilely for three hours, from San Vicente to Wilshire and from 11th to 18th streets. His wife, Shala, called the police and three animal shelters. ‘They told us not to get our hopes too high,’ she recalls. ‘I was shocked. I was crying all night.’ When Scott returned home around 10 p.m., his wife and daughters, Lauren, 10, and Brittany, 15, were printing 1,000 flyers with Fluffy’s picture. ‘There were a lot of tears in the house,’ he says. ‘One flyer read something like: ’10-year-old desperate to find her dog.” Scott and Shala originally bought Fluffy as a puppy for their daughters, who named her. ‘When she’s clean she looks like a cotton ball,’ he says. The next morning, at about 7:30 a.m., Scott opened the front door to take his daughters to school’and there was Fluffy. ‘She was smelling the plants to see if it was her house,’ he recalls. ‘She was pretty nerved and frazzled. Her face was caked with mud and her body had thorns sticking out. I had to hose her off a fair bit and check her tag to see if it was her.’ The O’Neils believe that Fluffy made her way to 7th Street, down the hill into Santa Monica Canyon to PCH, then west to Temescal Canyon and up Bowdoin and the El Medio area, where they have lived for 13 years. But how could she have known the way home? ‘The only link we can figure is that my wife used to jog along the beach with Fluffy two summers ago,’ says Scott, who’s amazed that Fluffy survived the dangerous trip at night. Shala used to run down Temescal, along the beach and up the spiral stairs by the California Incline to her mother’s house on 6th St. ‘Everybody was amazed with Fluffy’s speed and strength as a puppy,’ Shala says. ‘She was a smart dog from the beginning.’ Lauren says she knew Fluffy would find her way home. Scott thinks that Fluffy is ‘a little wiser’ having survived the ordeal. ‘Several days later, I had the gate open and she didn’t even walk near it.’ Lauren O’Neil, who attends Marquez Elementary, recently starred as Fern in the Theatre Palisades Kids production of ‘Charlotte’s Web The Musical.’ Brittany O’Neil, a Palisades High sophomore, was a Miss Palisades runner-up in this year’s Youth Jennifer Kelley and Greg Young were married on May 1 on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The ceremony took place in St. Gregory the Great Church with a reception following at Sea Pines Plantation. The bride is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Kelley of Bluffton, South Carolina. The bridegroom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Young, currently of Danville, California, and former residents of the area. The bridegroom was born in Santa Monica, graduated from St. Matthew’s, Harvard-Westlake and Vanderbilt University. He is currently employed with Booz-Allen Hamilton in Washington, D.C. The bride grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, and graduated from Notre Dame University. She is employed by Fleishman Hilliard and works in its Washington, D.C. office. The bridesmaids included the bridegroom’s sister, Traci Young, a Palisades resident. Other attendants included childhood friend Rebecca Taylor Hinds as maid of honor, Karen Damaso, Nina Griswold, Kate Nagel and Angela Cooper. The bridegroom was attended by Brian Daily Given, a high school and college friend, as best man and his cousin Michael McNitt, Blair Bright, Charles Summers III, Everette Stubbs and Brian Kelley. The couple honeymooned in the Caribbean and will make their home in Arlington, Virginia.

Art History For Kids

By JANET ZAREM Children’s Literature Columnist Rarely has art history been so child-friendly as in Christine Bjork’s 1987 book, ‘Linnea in Monet’s Garden.’ ‘Linnea’ marries the story of a fictional girl to historical and artistic information about Monet and other Impressionists. Still in print, it remains as fresh as the flowers at Giverny themselves. ‘Linnea’ aims its text at readers 8 through 12, though it also boasts numerous adult fans. Fortunately for the picture-book crowd, books which feature younger children and great artists are becoming increasingly popular. Two authors, James Mayhew and Laurence Anholt, have created series in which children take center stage to introduce renowned names in the European artistic canon. Their books include illustrations of famous paintings and sculptures. (Concerned parents, take note: these books are heavily edited for 3- to 7-year-olds’no ear slashing, nervous breakdowns or naked ladies). In James Mayhew’s ‘Katie’ books, a young girl, powered by her imagination, enters one painting after another, enjoying adventures with its subjects, when she and her grandmother tour a museum. In ‘Katie Meets the Impressionists,’ she transports herself into paintings by Monet, Renoir and Degas. In ‘Katie and the Sunflowers,’ she visits Expressionist works by Van Gogh, Gauguin and Cezanne. In ‘Katie and the Mona Lisa,’ she romps through Renaissance paintings by da Vinci, Botticelli, Carpaccio and Raphael. Brief artist biographies follow each story. In his five books, Laurence Anholt takes another approach. The children in these books are historical figures who encountered the artists Anholt presents. Short biographies explain the relationships between the children and the artists. In ‘Leonardo and the Flying Boy,’ one of da Vinci’s apprentice pupils, the boy Zoro, discovers his master is both a brilliant artist and a visionary scientist. Zoro’s flight in Leonardo’s proto-airplane forms the core of the story. In ‘The Magical Garden of Claude Monet,’ the girl Julie longs to visit the country. Her mother accompanies her and her naughty dog, Louey, to Giverny. In real life, Julie Manet was the daughter of Impressionist artist Berthe Morisot. In ‘Camille and the Sunflowers,’ the lad Camille introduces Van Gogh and his famous yellow house through portraits the artist painted of Camille and his family. Brightly colored illustrations leaven the story of Van Gogh’s tragic life, told simply, without unnecessary detail or drama. In ‘Degas and the Little Dancer,’ Anhold frames the story of Marie van Goethen, the young dancer who posed for Degas’ famous sculpture, in a series of flashbacks from the present to Marie’s own time and story. In ‘Picasso and the Girl With a Ponytail,’ Sylvette David meets the still vigorous 73-year-old Picasso and becomes his (platonic) muse and model. Through his changing portraits of Sylvette, children learn about Cubism. Sylvette still lives. Born in 1934, she herself became an artist, now named Lydia Corbett. All these books make viewing art a vital, personal experience for children living in a time dominated by television and computer screens. Look at them and see for yourself.