Shirley Haggstrom walks through Los Liones Gateway Park, marveling at how things have grown since she and other volunteers helped win the fight to save this half-mile slice of land as state parkland. At one time, ‘people wanted to develop this area and build condominiums,’ Haggstrom said in an interview, and later ‘Kehillat Israel wanted it for a school.’ In recognition of her ongoing efforts to help maintain the landscaping at Los Liones (just north of Sunset Boulevard), and her decades of activism with the Castellammare Homeowners Association, the Pacific Palisades Community Council and the Historical Society, Haggstrom will receive a Community Service Award from the Community Council on December 10. She was surprised at the honor, after having written a letter nominating Ethel Haydon (who will also receive the Council’s top award, along with Paul Glasgall and Barbara Kohn). ‘I didn’t know anyone had written a letter for me,’ Haggstrom said. ‘I prefer working under the radar.’ At Los Liones, which lies between Castellammare and Paseo Miramar, ‘we’re working to have a shunt installed at the top of the park [the trailhead into the Santa Monica Mountains] with Proposition O money,’ Haggstrom said. Instead of having runoff water from the mountains travel directly into the ocean through a giant storm drain, the idea is to have the shunt divert this water through a half-mile porous creekbed. ’The UV rays from the sun would help kill the bacteria,’ she said. ‘Los Liones Park could be the poster canyon for clean water,’ while also regaining a natural streambed during the rainy season. ’When we reclaimed the park [in 1999],’ Haggstrom added, ‘the streambed was all concrete. People who have lived here for a long time said there used to be water in it and kids would play in the stream.’ About a half-dozen women meet regularly on Thursdays to maintain the park by weeding, picking up trash and watering. Although Haggstrom can’t always join them, she goes once a week to water recently planted oak trees. One two-foot-tall tree is safely enclosed by a small wire fence, keeping it safe from hungry deer. ’This is a special tree,’ Haggstrom said. ‘It started as an acorn from Founders Oak Island [on Haverford Avenue] and it is in honor of my husband, Gus, who died a few years ago.’ A native of Colorado, Haggstrom married Gus in 1959. After he held university faculty positions in Colorado, Chicago and San Francisco, the couple moved to Castellammare in 1972 when Gus joined The Rand Corporation. Their two children attended Marquez Elementary School, where Shirley, a former high school teacher, became active reading to kindergarten students. Chris, now 41, works for Ticketmaster and is married to an attorney, Tamara. His brother, Eric, died of kidney disease when he was 16. Through her sons, Haggstrom developed an interest in tennis. After enrolling them in a class at the Palisades Recreation Center, she decided that it looked like fun and signed up for her own lessons. Hooked on the sport, she continues to play three times a week. Haggstrom served on the board of the Castellammare Homeowners Association for many years. During that time, the board opposed construction of a new amphitheater at the Getty Villa without community input. ‘We were not so much opposed to the Getty, but to the possible noise,’ she said, noting that the association continues to work with the Getty about ongoing noise issues, especially garbage trucks. Haggstrom is now more of an advisor ‘because I have the historical memory.’ The association’s latest challenge is getting the City of Los Angeles to follow through with a stoplight at Los Liones and Sunset Boulevard. ‘It was required by law by the City when they gave Waldorf School permission to open at that location,’ she said. ‘I was recently at a meeting trying to get that done.’ Along the way, Haggstrom served eight years on the Community Council, including a two-year term as chairman from 1996 to 1998’a role she described as ‘a 24-hour-a-day job.’ When she ‘retired,’ a Palisadian-Post editorial commented that ‘Haggstrom built on the foundation established by past chairmen and, with good-humored efficiency, made it an even more vital local entity.’ She recently completed a two-year stint on the council as the Historical Society representative. ‘It is amazing that all of the things we dealt with when I was chair have returned, including cell towers and billboards,’ she said. While Historical Society president, Haggstrom helped make it possible for Pacific Palisades historical photographs to be preserved, catalogued and made available to the public through the Santa Monica Library.’ Periodically, Haggstrom organizes cleanup days at Founders Oak Island and quietly removes graffiti in her neighborhood, while also serving on the board of the Temescal Canyon Association. ’There is still wonderful volunteerism in the community that inspires other volunteers,’ she said. ‘The one change that perturbs me is the lack of community with one’s neighbors’the ‘me first, I’m going to have it’ mentality.’ As one example, she pointed out that a few years back when the Castellammare Homeowners Association would explain the neighborhood’s prevailing CCR’s (conditions, covenants and restrictions) to newcomers who wanted to remodel or build a new home, they and their architects would cooperate. ’Now they’re litigious,’ Haggstrom said. ‘I would like to see a little more neighborliness.’
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