03/30/05

LC050330

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

If you build it, will they come? We'll tell you about the
Southern California city that's betting its future on senior
citizens.

Leonard Ellsworth>> It's great country here, you know.
Especially you can go shopping, you can go anywhere, you can
drive anywhere. It's not like Los Angeles.

Mark Bozigian>> There are restaurants, there are pharmacies.
It's more of an older type of downtown feel to it.

Val>> And then, how do you get vital information to an audience
that spends the day picking crops? Radio Campesina to the
rescue.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Los Angeles and other big cities are trying to bring
their downtowns back to life by attracting young single
professionals who love lofts and lattes. But one town is taking
a decidedly different approach. Lancaster is saying give me
your retired, your seniors, your elderly longing for affordable
housing and they've come up with a multi-million dollar plan to
do it. I went north to see what this senior-friendly downtown
would look like.

Lancaster, about an hour's drive north of Los Angeles, but
chances are you've never driven through its downtown. Once you
do, you can't miss signs of what helped build Lancaster, but the
era of aerospace is over and planners hope to usher in a new
source of life. The key are folks like this gentleman. That's
right. Lancaster city officials are betting the future of their
downtown on the elderly.

Steve Malicot>> Well, it's pretty exciting. The city of
Lancaster is really working very hard to develop this, what they
call the downtown site.

Val>> Steve Malicot is head of Lancaster's Chamber of Commerce.

Steve Malicot>> They've torn down a lot of the old apartments
that were here that were in disrepair, some of the old houses,
and their redevelopment plan includes a Senior Center. We have
one over here now, but they're going to continue to work that,
and it's really going to be a very nice area particularly for
seniors.

Val>> The idea is simple. There is already a post office,
library, museum, Metrolink station and Senior Center, all within
walking distance. Why not build plenty of affordable senior
housing and make it a Mecca for the retired? Frank Roberts is
the Mayor of Lancaster. How did you decide that would be your
strategy?

Frank Roberts>> Well, we know that the population of this
particular region and lots of regions of California are aging
and it's because we live longer, we have better healthcare --
I'm sure that must be the reason -- but it wasn't too many years
ago that sixty years old was kind of an old person. Now I'm
seventy-two and I feel like I'm going to live another twenty
years at least because I do everything I want to do and that's
happening.

Val>> We stopped by the Senior Center just a few blocks off the
main street. One of the busiest rooms was the pool room.
Leonard Ellsworth is the kind of person Lancaster wants more of.

Leonard Ellsworth>> It's great country here. You know,
especially you go shopping, you can go anywhere, you can drive
anywhere. Not like Los Angeles.

Val>> Statistics show that, over the next fifteen years, the
number of residents over sixty in Lancaster and Palmdale will
nearly double, a fact not lost on City Planner, Mark Bozigian.

Mark Bozigian>> There are restaurants, there are pharmacies.
It's more of an older type of downtown feel to it, fifties,
sixties, seventies. So it's more of that quaint downtown feel,
the mom and pop shop.

Val>> Which they feel comfortable with.

Mark Bozigian>> They would feel comfortable. I mean, a lot of
communities try to build a fake downtown, if you will, to
replicate it. Well, we have a real downtown, so we're just
putting housing with it.

Val>> Affordable housing is the key. A year ago, ground was
broken on new senior apartments. At that time, it looked like
this. Today it looks like this. Arbor Gardens is a seventy-six
unit complex with a rec room, high-speed internet and other
amenities. Autumn Rodriguez is the manager. She says that two-
thirds of the apartments are already leased.

Autumn Rodriguez>> Right now, we are moving in people on the
first floor. We've been very surprised at how many prospects
we've gotten months before opening and we get phone calls, at
least fifteen to twenty per day, inquiring about the community,
when it's going to be opening, the amenities and what have you.
So that's for about four to five months straight, we've been
having an enormous amount of phone calls.

Val>> They have one bedroom and two bedroom apartments and how
affordable is affordable?

Autumn Rodriguez>> We have one bedrooms plus den for $651 and
we have two bedrooms at $780. For the most part, we're right in
the perfect income bracket of what's needed out here.

Val>> A few blocks away, construction has begun on another
senior apartment complex. It will open in 2006.

Autumn Rodriguez>> Again, that will be a 150 senior community,
as well as it's going to have commercial space as well. So we
plan on having like a coffee shop, a beauty salon, something
that the seniors will utilize and it's close to where they can
just walk to.

Val>> Although apartments for seniors are a magnet, Lancaster
isn't stopping there. Their redevelopment plans call for
tearing down old housing, making way for a new park, schools, a
childcare center and youth center, along with refurbished
churches and a spruced-up commercial section. Whether
Lancaster's metamorphosis succeeds will also depend on two other
important services. One is medical care and the other is police
protection. Mayor Roberts says medical care is not a problem.

Frank Roberts>> There's any number of doctors' offices
available to them, I guess, in walking distance, but of course,
the main thing is we have the large major hospital, the largest
one and the only real major hospital in this region, and it's
the Antelope Valley Hospital Medical Center.

Val>> As for safety, Lancaster's crime record has not been the
best, but once again, Mayor Roberts is confident.

Frank Roberts>> We are going to be putting another group of
deputies on the streets through Baca, who is the Sheriff of this
county, and we do California Contract Cities through Lee Baca,
so we'll be having about, oh, another third more deputies
around.

Leonard Ellsworth>> How about Los Angeles? Take one of those
cities. Philadelphia. There's plenty of crime there.
Actually, this is a nice community. Besides, we've got the
sheriffs. They're there. When I had my bypass, right? I
called 9-1-1. I had to do it by myself. They were there within
about five minutes. Saved me.

Val>> So how will Lancaster with a population of 130,000
finance this $125 million dollar project? The key, they say, is
public and private partnerships and Lancaster is known for being
developer-friendly.

Mark Bozigian>> We welcome development here. We fast-track
development and we try to partner with quality developers. We
look at it as the city can't do everything on its own and the
Redevelopment Agency can't, so we bring in partners.

Val>> They also have plenty of sales tax revenues coming in
from big-box stores that are proliferating on the west side of
town. While Wal-Mart may spark a battle in other cities, not in
Lancaster, who will have two of them soon.

Mark Bozigian>> And those type of big-box uses or large
retailers generate sales tax which allows us to fund projects
like this and public safety and such.

Val>> So there's no conflict or clash between these two sort of
areas of town or styles?

Mark Bozigian>> No, not at all. People are living so much
longer and the baby boomers are getting to be in their sixties,
and the baby boomers have a much different expectation for
retirement than probably their parents did and they're going to
expect more activities, more city types of services, more
socialization, coffee shops. They're much more active, so,
yeah, we think it's a great mix.

Leonard Ellsworth>> I live in an apartment, but I'm on a fixed
income, right? But I still survive here. I couldn't do that
like in Burbank or Los Angeles or Glendale. It's too high over
there. The rent's too high.

Val>> You're staying put?

Leonard Ellsworth>> Oh, yeah, I'm staying here. This is God's
country.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> Cesar Chavez is best known as leader of the Farm Worker
Movement. His weapons were boycotts and unions. But what you
may not realize is that he also left a legacy on the air, a
radio station called Radio Campesina. And as Hena Cuevas tells
us, it's still broadcasting decades later even in this era of
media consolidation and rating wars.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> For the past twenty-five years, Luis has been
bringing a radio to work.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Music and words combined with the sounds of the
pruning of roses.

Luis>> It makes the day go by a little faster. I'm not as
tired.

Hena Cuevas>> Maria Villegas has spent nearly thirty years
walking these rows, always listening to the radio in her front
pocket. Her favorite station? Radio Campesina. Translation?
Literally, radio for farm workers.

Maria Villegas>> For those of us who work in the fields, it
gives us a lot of information that sometimes we didn't know
about.

Hena Cuevas>> Five in the morning, Radio Campesina begins its
cycle.

>> "This is Radio Campesina. Stay with us."

Hena Cuevas>> This is Campesina. Wake up, farm worker. A play
on words. Good morning, listener. It's time to wake up to your
rights. Today's topic? What to do if you're laid off.

>> "People who are here illegally, even though they should
receive their salary, don't have the right to receive extra pay
when they're laid off."

Hena Cuevas>> The station is the creation of labor activist,
Cesar Chavez, a way to reach the masses with his message on
workers' rights. Chavez's voice can still be heard through
recordings of his speeches.

Cesar Chavez>> "We share the same future. We are nothing by
ourselves, but together we're worth a lot. Alone, we aren't
respected, but when we're together, they even begin to tremble."

Cesar Chavez>> "We've got to get out there with a picket sign
and get some action going."

Hena Cuevas>> Chavez died in 1993 and left behind a legacy that
includes the United Farm Workers Union. He wanted to help
create a voice for the workers whose life he had shared, so in
order to reach a larger number of people, Chavez bought his own
radio station in 1983. Today, his sons, Pablo and Anthony
Chavez, run Radio Campesina, the flagship station in a network
of nine radio outlets in California, Arizona and Washington
State. Pablo Chavez remembers when it all started in a barn.

Pablo Chavez>> The folks that were running the radio station
were farm workers, people that would work all day picking
oranges and working the grapes and they'd rush home and take a
quick shower and get a quick taco and come in to the station and
do their show.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Case in point, DJ "El Gato", Spanish for "The
Cat".

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> His real name is Pepe Escamilla and he is Radio
Campesina's most popular DJ. His show is heard on all nine of
the company's radio stations.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> Before he found his calling at Radio Campesina,
he worked on a farm harvesting grapes. A friend convinced him
to go in for an interview at Radio Campesina. At first, he was
reluctant.

Pepe "El Gato" Escamilla>> They asked me if I am interested in
working there and I don't know. Besides, I work all day in the
field. I can work in the afternoon seven to ten or something
like that if you want.

Hena Cuevas>> Now he has one of the most successful shows on
the Radio Campesina stations.

Pepe "El Gato" Escamilla>> If I'm number two, that's pretty
good. But we're working hard to be number one. They have the
money, they have all kinds of technology over there at stations.
We're working hard right here at Radio Campesina to be number
one.

Hena Cuevas>> His sidekick is Fernando. Their four-hour
morning show blends music, comedy --

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> -- and information. This morning, it's the
latest Supreme Court ruling on laid off undocumented workers.

>> "Please give us a call if you want to to talk about the
ruling from the Supreme Court that says employers don't have to
pay undocumented workers even if that worker has been unfairly
dismissed."

Hena Cuevas>> The radio station is already number one in five
out of the six markets it's in, but it wasn't always that way.
Anthony Chavez.

Anthony Chavez>> When we first started in the early days, it
was very information rich, but our audience was very, very
small. We were doing a lot of movement stuff like people who
were going to follow us would believe anyway.

Hena Cuevas>> This station started up as a traditional
educational station funded by grants from the UFW.

Pablo Chavez>> And so the classic case of the preacher, you
know, preaching to the choir.

Hena Cuevas>> After their father's death, the brothers decided
to change the station from a more educational station to a
commercial one, the only way they could see it survive
financially and remain relevant.

Pablo Chavez>> We wanted to be commercial broadcasters and we
said, we can't, because dad is looking down on us. We didn't
want to be educators because the audience is too small. So we
were back and forth, but we found the balance now and it's
great.

Hena Cuevas>> And as a tribute to their father, Radio Campesina
broadcasts a daily prayer written by Cesar Chavez in the
sixties.

Cesar Chavez>> "Lord, give me the honesty and patience so that
we never tire of the struggle."

Hena Cuevas>> Pablo Chavez says initially there was opposition
from the old-timers, those who felt the brothers were abandoning
Chavez's vision.

Pablo Chavez>> Our job is to talk to new people, to be relevant
in today's issues and not to become a relic of the past. You
know, the last thing I want to do is have this old radio station
that has five or six hundred listeners who are old-timers
talking about the old days.

Hena Cuevas>> Of course, the Farm Workers Union is still key to
the station.

Anthony Chavez>> Even though we play music, it's only an avenue
to get people to listen about what's happening with the union.
It's a tool.

[Film Clip]

Hena Cuevas>> At this second official celebration of Cesar
Chavez Day, Radio Campesina is there. Morning DJ elicits
viewers to come and participate.

>> "We invite you to come down and join us. We're going to
have a great time and also learn more about our great leader,
Cesar Chavez."

Hena Cuevas>> For farm workers like Luis, Radio Campesina is
the quickest and sometimes the only way to get information about
the UFW.

Luis>> We get messages from our union, messages on when we're
going to have meetings and other things.

Hena Cuevas>> For Maria Villegas, it provides a link to home.

Maria Villegas>> For those of us who come from far away, they
play nice music that reminds us of our country.

Hena Cuevas>> Reminders of a land far away and of the legacy of
Cesar Chavez and his efforts on behalf of farm workers.

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Val>> We've all heard about the captains of industry, people
like Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller, but what about the queens
of capitalism, women who made fortunes in business even before
they could vote? Vicki Curry had a chance to learn about some
of these amazing women from Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire. Betsy is
a business owner herself and formerly statewide President of the
National Association of Women Business Owners.

Vicki Curry>> So what may be surprising to some people to know
that some of the earliest female entrepreneurs in the country
were working in fields that were traditionally dominated by men.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> So true. In fact, it's quite ironic
that a woman actually owned the printing press which printed the
first edition of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It
was Mary Katherine Goddard and she took over the business from
her husband. She was doing quite well and, even so, her brother
came to take over the business from her and she even lost her
job as the postmistress of the area.

Vicki Curry>> So some of the other women of that time are
Rebecca Webb Lukens who owned an iron mill in the 1800's?

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Yes, and she took over the iron mill
from her family and turned it into an incredibly profitable
business. It was highly unusual for a woman to run an iron mill
and be responsible for part of the industrial revolution of the
history of our country.

Vicki Curry>> Yes. Another surprising person, Martha Coston,
who invented a signal flare.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Wasn't that incredible? She
actually was responsible for patenting the signal flare that was
used by the Navy in the Civil War and then she continued over
the next several years to improve the patent of the flares that
we know of today that were invented by a woman and yet she had
to use her husband's name in the patent and in business doing
business with the military because it was not fashionable in
that day for women to do business at all, let alone in a man's
world.

Vicki Curry>> Another woman that managed to succeed despite the
legal restrictions against her was Myra Bradwell. Tell me about
her.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Myra Bradwell was a woman who tried
to get into the Bar Association in Chicago, but could not. In
fact, there were, as you say, legal requirements that women were
not to be admitted to the Bar, so she started a legal newspaper
and printed all of the legal decisions of the day and the bills
that were passed by the state legislature.

Vicki Curry>> One of the women that I found really fascinating
is Hetty Green. Tell me about her.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Well, Hetty in 1874 started to build
her fortune based on the family savings and she was a former
Quaker and she was known as the Wall Street Miser. In fact, she
was known for her frugality. But she became one of the richest
and wealthiest women on Wall Street.

Vicki Curry>> Apparently, she dressed very shabbily because of
her frugality and so she was known as the Witch of Wall Street.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> She did not look like a wealthy
woman at all, yet that belied her great, great fortune that she
made from being such a miser.

Vicki Curry>> Tell me about Olive Ann Beech.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Well, she was the wife of the man
who started the Beechcraft Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas.
He died, but she was a partner in the business already and she
continued to build that company for decades ahead.

Vicki Curry>> And one that some people here in California may
have heard of, Julia Morgan. She was the architect for Hearst
Castle up in San Simeon.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> I think that's where almost everyone
has heard of Julia Morgan, but she had a long, long career in
architecture. She was the first woman to be licensed as an
architect in the state of California. She originally came from
Oakland where she had done monuments and other swimming pool
architecture for Randolph Hearst's mother, Phoebe. That's how
he got to know her and their relationship built over the years
and he relied on her for many architectural accomplishments.
But, of course, her greatest achievement was Hearst Castle which
so many people have attended.

Vicki Curry>> Now, of course, there have been many women
throughout history who have been quite successful in what we
often think of as women's work. In fact, many of them have
become household names through their products, like Elizabeth
Arden or Helena Rubenstein, but there are some others that we
haven't heard of.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Well, it was amazing to find out
that the Nieman-Marcus store, the department store, also the I.
Magnin department store, were founded by women of those same
names. They built the emporiums that we know today as pillars
of the department store business. But women went into clothing
manufacturing, into hair care products.

Mrs. C.J. Walker was an African-American woman who really
created the nationwide system of direct sales in homes and
beauty salons with her products for treating African-American
hair and she was a wonderful role model as well as became
fabulously wealthy and left the cabin where she grew up which
was owned by her parents who were slaves and eventually owned a
fabulous mansion located very near the Vanderbilts and the
Rockefellers of New York.

Vicki Curry>> Another African-American woman who was quite
significant came a little bit before C.J. Walker. Her name was
Elizabeth Keckley.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Yes, and she was a dressmaker who
came out of slavery and had learned to sew and read and write
when she was a slave. She bought her freedom and she first
became the dressmaker to Mrs. Jefferson Davis. Then when the
Lincolns moved to Washington, she moved to Washington and became
the dressmaker for Mrs. Lincoln. A little bit later, she wrote
an expose revealing the intimacies of the Lincoln family and
that was quite a scandal in the day. So she lost her
dressmaking business and, unfortunately, went into a severe
decline and she actually died in a home for destitute women.

Vicki Curry>> A more contemporary woman that made quite an
impact was Brownie Wise.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> It was after the Second World War
during the 1950's that Brownie Wise was the woman who created
Tupperware parties. She worked for the Tupperware Company and
noticed that plastic silverware was languishing on the store
shelves in department stores, so she gathered up the materials
and took them into women's homes and started Tupperware parties.
She was a single mother herself, so she could have a more
flexible work schedule and have a creative way of selling the
products.

Vicki Curry>> Now there are also quite a few entrepreneurs from
California. Even though we're a pretty young state, we have
this woman, Juana Briones from the 1800's.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Yes. Juana Briones actually owned
the area of land that is today San Francisco. She was owner of
a tavern, she was a rancher, she was a midwife, she was a
healer. She did just about everything in the 1850's.

Vicki Curry>> Now there's one California entrepreneur that has
had quite an impact on the country, but most people don't know
her name, Ruth Handler.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> Ruth Handler was the woman who
started the Mattel Company with her husband, Eliot. She created
the Barbie Doll and the Ken Doll named after their two children.
She ran the company and she made so many things happen in the
toy business that we just take for granted today. For example,
she sponsored the first Mickey Mouse Club and, as a result, she
was able to utilize the toys made by the Mattel Company on that
show, and that was the beginning of toy promotions on television
today.

Vicki Curry>> So there's been quite a history of enterprising
women in America.

Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire>> We owe them a debt of building the
country, building their businesses that have really given us the
names and the role models and the success stories that made it
easier for women today.

Val>> You can learn more about the National Association of
Women Business Owners by going to their website. And that's our
program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times,
thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

A big brother's search for a killer and a young man's grim fate
on the streets of Los Angeles.

>> Oh, my God, this can't be true. This could not have
happened to Dexter because he wasn't a gangbanger. He was a kid
who was so sweet and so loving that that's the last thing I
would have ever thought of.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.