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Life & Times Transcript

2/5/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Will artistry and history be enough to save these charming creatures?

Senya Lubisich>> We think that they should be preserved and, as an historian, I think old is important.

Rebecca Perez>> There are playground safety standards and, while they may look just like concrete structures, there are slides involved.

Val Zavala>> And then, we admit it, we can be a bit eccentric, but Los Angeles also has a rich history and the photographs to prove it.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> More than forty years ago, an artist by the name of Benjamin Dominguez created a wonderful children's park in the city of San Gabriel, a park that children are still enjoying today. But what happens when something that was created back in the 1960s collides with modern-day safety codes? As Toni Guinyard tells us, something's got to give.

Toni Guinyard>> In a quiet corner of San Gabriel's Vincent Lugo Park, concrete sea creatures rule. A serpent cuts through an ocean of sand. Dolphins jump. A giant snail sits. All poised and waiting to be brought to life by a child's imagination.

[Film Clip]

Eric Kirchhoff>> I remember this is sensible. It's just like going to a theme park such as Disneyland or such.

Toni Guinyard>> This is La Laguna de San Gabriel.

Eric Kirchhoff>> Colloquially, you call these a monster park or dinosaur park. I don't know how that came about. I grew up here and that's how we referred to it. It was dinosaur park.

Toni Guinyard>> Eric Kirchhoff used to come here as a kid.

Eric Kirchhoff>> What was very special about this park wasn't just that you look around and you see these incredible creatures that are larger than life, but that you actually had to participate with it. "That whale's got a big mouth. Is he going to eat you?"

>> "No."

>> "No."

Eric Kirchhoff>> And it was all rather intimidating for someone who was only five or four years old (laughter).

Toni Guinyard>> Now he wants to make sure other kids will have something to come to as well. The creatures, built in the 1960s, are being threatened by progress. The city has plans to renovate.

Rebecca Perez>> The renovation includes the renovation of the entire park and La Laguna is one portion of that renovation.

Toni Guinyard>> Rebecca Perez is Director of Parks and Recreation for the city of San Gabriel, a city that, for the first time in, well, forever, has developed a master plan for modernizing its parks, and the creatures of La Laguna might not be in compliance with twenty-first century safety and accessibility rules.

Rebecca Perez>> There are playground safety standards and, while they may look just like concrete structures, there are slides involved and there are specific state and federal guidelines that we have to comply with.

Toni Guinyard>> And so it is that La Laguna and the aging, well-worn concrete sea creatures that call it home are in need of being saved.

Eloy Zarate>> At first, to be honest, it was nostalgic. It was that I played here, you know? My kids play here. How dare you take this away from me?

Toni Guinyard>> So it's personal.

Eloy Zarate>> It was personal.

Toni Guinyard>> Eloy Zarate, his wife, Senya Lubisich, and their four children, make up one of three families that call themselves Friends of La Laguna. They've already collected and presented signed petitions to the City Council and they're talking preservation to anyone willing to listen.

Eloy Zarate>> Places like these are endangered, endangered across the nation because part of the requirement for becoming an historical site is being fifty. Fifty is that age, fifty years old. This is forty-two. If you bulldoze things before they become fifty, how do you know if they're historical?

Senya Lubisich>> People love this park. A lot of people said, "Oh, they stopped cleaning them years ago. They stopped maintaining them years ago and we would like to see that corrected. We think that they should be preserved." And then as an historian, I think old is important.

Toni Guinyard>> Both Senya and Eloy are college history professors and what they learned about La Laguna makes this story more than a tug-of-war over the fate of an aging park. This is about a city rediscovering a part of its past.

Fernando Dominguez>> My father was an artist. He was a beautiful man.

Toni Guinyard>> Fernando Dominguez is one of thirteen children born to Mexican artist, Benjamin Dominguez, a man who immigrated to the United States in 1956 at the age of sixty-two.

Fernando Dominguez>> He just wanted to do something for this country that he loved and leave something for the enjoyment of the community, the kids. Since he was an artist in concrete, the best thing he knew to do was exactly what he's done.

Toni Guinyard>> He began building his creations in El Paso, Texas, Las Vegas, Whittier Narrows, Garden Grove and even a rustic bridge in Beverly Hills' Coldwater Park. Turns out that the creatures of La Laguna were born from his imagination and formed by his hands.

Fernando Dominguez>> We saw him make all the sketches, all the figures, measurements and everything else. Some other parks, they have some works, but San Gabriel has one of the best. A lot of figures here, the best that my father could build, and it was the last park that he built.

Anna Dominguez>> I was at the opening. I had three children then and I was carrying the smallest one in my arms.

Toni Guinyard>> Benjamin Dominguez died in 1974 and, on Father's Day a few years ago, his son, Fernando, and Fernando's wife, Anna, were visiting southern California. Before heading home to Las Vegas, they made two stops.

Anna Dominguez>> We went to the cemetery and we stopped by my father-in-law's park. We were sitting there and we were taking pictures and Eloy was there.

Eloy Zarate>> There was a gentleman and his wife going around looking at every one of the sculptures. They were taking pictures and like taking notes.

Fernando Dominguez>> As we sat down on one of the benches, there was this young couple there playing with the kids.

[Film Clip]

Eloy Zarate>> I went up and said, "Excuse me. What are you doing?"

Fernando Dominguez>> We started talking and he said that he had played in this park when he was a kid and now he was bringing his own kids to play in the same park. I mentioned that my father had built such a park.

Eloy Zarate> I said, "Excuse me? Who's your dad?" He said, "My dad was Benjamin Dominguez and he was an artist who came to this country and did playgrounds for children." The goose bumps that I got from saying, "You mean, these are artistic works?"

Anna Dominguez>> I describe it as fate because it was any day, any minute, any hour, any time difference, we wouldn't have met.

Toni Guinyard>> Because of that chance meeting, Eloy and Senya were in the position of knowing more about the history of this park than most of the people in the community. So when city officials started talking about improvements to the park, that's when the real history lesson began. As a history professor, you still missed this?

Eloy Zarate>> Yes, absolutely.

Toni Guinyard>> You have to admit it.

Eloy Zarate>> Yes, I admit it. I'm guilty.

Toni Guinyard>> So you have been educating the city in this process.

Eloy Zarate>> Yes. That has been one of the most important aspects of what we're trying to do. Our goal is to educate.

Senya Lubisich>> When I look at these, I think of his hands touching and shaping all of these pieces for children. In San Gabriel, he really intended this to be a gift for children.

Eric Kirchhoff>> But we also hope to instill with the understanding that this isn't just individual pieces of work here, that this whole park is contextual in nature, that they all belong together and they all belong in this arrangement.

Toni Guinyard>> But that depends in part on if the concrete creatures can be brought into compliance.

Rebecca Perez>> We don't want to have something that is something that they can merely look at, but can't touch because of the safety features.

Toni Guinyard>> So with the discovery of this part of San Gabriel's history brings with it the challenge of planning for the future while honoring the past.

Eloy Zarate>> This is not about the park. This is not about my childhood. This is not about my kids' childhoods. This is about Benjamin Dominguez.

Toni Guinyard>> Benjamin Dominguez, a man who left his mark by building sea monsters in the sand to be shared for generations. I'm Toni Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So should the monster park be saved? We'd like to know what you think. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Her father-in-law was a Congressman, her brother was the Mayor of Baltimore, but it's Nancy Pelosi who is making history as the first woman Speaker of the House. NewsHour correspondent, Spencer Michels, tells us more about this Democrat from San Francisco.

Nancy Pelosi>> "Thank you all very much."

Spencer Michels>> Nancy Pelosi used political skills honed over more than thirty years to help engineer the Democrat's 2006 victory which not only brought her party to power in Congress, but gave her the top job in the House and made her the highest ranking elected woman in United States history. It was a long road from 1987 when, at the age of forty-seven, she first ran for Congress in San Francisco against an array of better-known candidates.

Nancy Pelosi>> "They'll take the low road and I'll take the high road and I'll get to Congress before them."

Spencer Michels>> Active as a Democrat for many years behind the scenes, she was a big-time fundraiser for the party and had a major hand in the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. In the 1987 local race, Pelosi was the best financed candidate. She also gathered an impressive list of endorsers who were indebted to her, including Maryland's newly-elected Senator Barbara Mikulski.

Barbara Mikulski>> "And I was out there going earrings to earrings with Linda Chavez. She had Ronald Reagan and I had Nancy Pelosi."

Spencer Michels>> Pelosi was the favorite of San Francisco's politically liberal and powerful Burton family headed by Congressman Phillip Burton who built coalitions in the diverse city.

[Film Clip]

Spencer Michels>> After his death, Burton's wife Sala replaced her husband in Congress. Phillip's brother, John, also a former Congressman, and long-time party activist, Agar Jaicks, recalled how Sala Burton, on her deathbed, anointed Nancy Pelosi to succeed her.

John Burton>> "Sala was a fairly caustic woman when she was in pain from cancer. She said, "I called you here because I want you to help Nancy" and she launches into this thing like she's nominating a president. She said, "She's smart, she's tough, she's good on the issues, she's organizational, she understands." I mean, everything that we see now, she had Nancy Pelosi pegged right down to her socks.

Spencer Michels>> "Good evening. I'm Spencer Michels. The election for Congress is next Tuesday." The 1987 election was raucous.

[Film Clip]

Spencer Michels>> Pelosi debated her thirteen opponents, one of the few times she has debated, speaking out against American intervention in Central America and defending herself against charges that, because she was wealthy, she was out of touch with the poor.

Carol Ruth Silver>> "How can she relate to people like me, a single parent, working mother? Why can't she relate? Because the problems are different. She's never met a payroll. She's never had to worry about childcare. She's never had a kid in a public school. She's never worried about the things that worry most of the people in San Francisco."

Spencer Michels>> "Let's let her answer that charge, which gets made quite a bit in this campaign."

Nancy Pelosi>> "By my opponents, no doubt. I don't think you have to be sick to be a doctor or poor to understand the problems of the poor. I have spent my life committed to the ideals of the Democratic Party."

Spencer Michels>> Pelosi won the election using the slogan, "A voice that will be heard", a phrase she still relies on and one that her former Chief of Staff, Michael Yaki, recalls had more than one meaning.

Michael Yaki>> We used to get jokes from the Pelosi kids about, "Oh, yeah, one of these days, you're going to get the voice that will be heard."

Spencer Michels>> Yaki, who went on to become a San Francisco Supervisor, said that Pelosi drummed into his head the credo she lived by.

Michael Yaki>> Number one, politics is not for the faint of heart. Number two, politics is a free hedge clipping service. Every time you poke your head up, someone's there to chop it off. Number three, if you're going to throw a punch, you got to take a punch.

Spencer Michels>> Pelosi learned those lessons early as the youngest of six children in an Italian-American family in Baltimore. Her father, Thomas D'Alesandro, was Mayor and then a Congressman. Democratic politics, local and national, was always part of her life and so was her competitive nature.

Michael Yaki>> She really likes game shows like "Jeopardy". She was a "Jeopardy" freak.

Spencer Michels>> You're not kidding?

Michael Yaki>> Yeah. There were times when there would be a television on and "Jeopardy" would be on, so she and I would have these mini contests, you know, and see who could push the button faster and get the answers.

Spencer Michels>> After college in Washington, D.C., she married Paul Pelosi, a well-to-do businessman, and eventually they had five children. The family moved to San Francisco in 1969 and became close friends with Sally Hambrecht and her husband, investment banker, Bill Hambrecht.

Sally Hambrecht>> It was very clear that she waited until her children were at a certain age before she went into active politics. I've traveled with Nancy. I've been with her in many places in this country and outside of this country. Every Sunday, she goes to Mass. It doesn't matter where she is. She finds a way to go, and it's just part of her makeup.

Spencer Michels>> You can tell that she's religious?

Sally Hambrecht>> It's something that she does. It's where she can be with herself, I think.

Nancy Pelosi>> "Yes, my parents would be proud. They said they'd be so proud that you're going to be the Speaker. I said, they'd be proud, but they didn't raise me to be the Speaker. They raised me to be holy. They raised me to care about other people. They told us that you shouldn't pray to win an election. That really wasn't the program (laughter)."

Spencer Michels>> San Francisco was and remains a city with a liberal, even leftist, reputation, a city some call out of the American mainstream. So during and even after the 2006 campaign, Republicans used the specter of a Speaker from San Francisco as a way to attack Democrats.

Newt Gingrich>> "She is going to be a very left wing San Francisco value Speaker and she should be. She represents San Francisco and that's honestly her background."

Spencer Michels>> But Agar Jaicks says that, from the start, Pelosi allied herself with the liberal, though not the extreme wing of the party.

Agar Jaicks>> "When she sought people out that she admired the most, they were the ones that were on her list. She's a basic ideological Democrat, a liberal Democrat, but she knows how to be pragmatic and adjust to the situation. I don't care where you are or who you are. You're going to make some compromises or you aren't going to be in the leadership. She wants to be in the leadership and she's great in the leadership."

Nancy Pelosi>> "I thank San Francisco for giving me the privilege when I ran and my slogan was "A voice that will be heard." I think they've heard us."

Spencer Michels>> Pelosi is banking that the skills and toughness she displayed in her fractious hometown where she has been re-elected ten times have prepared her for her new role in a divided nation.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val Zavala>> Angelenos are famous for not knowing much about their own city's history. In fact, history in Los Angeles, they say, is last week's People Magazine. But I met two authors whose new book is helping to change that.

It's a history of Los Angeles that tells stories along with five hundred sixty-nine photographs. It includes a lot of firsts like the first photograph taken just north of downtown Los Angeles back in 1886. Then there's the first car in Los Angeles. Blame the horseless carriage for eventually edging these things out: street cars. Then there's the first Big Boy's Restaurant. It was in Glendale. And Los Angeles's first black mayor, Tom Bradley, a sharecropper's son.

The book is called "Picturing Los Angeles" by a husband and wife team, Jon and Nancy Wilkman, who gave me a whirlwind tour through some of Los Angeles's most interesting historical chapters.

Nancy Wilkman>> This photograph was taken in the 1880s when Midwesterners were coming to Los Angeles in the boom of the 80s. But what is so ironic is that, instead of using native materials that they found here, they imported lumber and they built homes that looked like they might belong in Ohio or Illinois or Iowa or somewhere else. There isn't a blade of grass or a tree to be seen. Now, of course, the city has filled in and is very beautiful.

Jon Wilkman>> One of the things that's really exciting about Los Angeles is discovering how many things began here. In 1910, the first Air Meet which was in the Dominguez Hills area took place. There's a wonderful photograph of a man from France who actually established the altitude record. Even more important is that you see a balloon and, below the balloon in a basket, if you look very closely, is a photographer from a newspaper taking a close-up. It's a great shot.

We all know that Los Angeles is the home of surfing, but most people don't know that the first surfer was a man named George Freeth who came here in the early part of the twentieth century. To promote tourists, he began surfing off the shore in Redondo Beach and Venice. He was brought here by Henry Huntington, the railroad magnate, to sort of attract people to a new resort along the beach.

Nancy Wilkman>> This is a delightful photograph that just makes me want to sort of walk in there and enjoy just seeing the people. This is Venice of America which was the creation of Abbott Kinney who had earned his wealth in cigarettes, I believe. He had a vision for a really cultural as well as an amusement center for people to come to and hear lectures about literature and about philosophy and so forth. Well, as it turned out, to his disappointment, of course, is that what the people wanted to do was to ride the rides and have fun.

Jon Wilkman>> The African American communities were an important part of it. This is a really wonderful photograph, an early crew from the fire department. There was a great deal of pride in those faces, although the fact in those days, the fire department was segregated. But it's a wonderful shot of that community showing pride in its community.

Nancy Wilkman>> This photograph was taken in 1910 when Los Angeles was becoming the center of movie-making. In fact, it was Hollywood and this photograph was taken probably near what's called Gower Gulch. The movie-makers at that time would come to that corner and pick up people who wanted to be in the movies and serve as extras. They would bring their own costumes many times. This was the Lasky Company and they were filming the first feature film completely shot here in the Los Angeles area and in the valley called "The Squaw Man".

Jon Wilkman>> This is a wonderful photograph that's sort of an example of the promotion of Los Angeles. It's a woman standing on the beach in the middle of December dressed in a Christmas tree with her bathing suit. Those photographs were sent back from people in Los Angeles to the east coast and the Midwest, you know, who were under a snow bank that said, "Here we are celebrating Christmas in our bathing suits on the beach." Of course, that attracted an enormous amount of people to come to Los Angeles.

Sports in Los Angeles really was a west coast affair because transportation was really difficult for the people of the east coast to come to. So in the 1950s, when the Dodgers decided to come to Los Angeles, it was, of course, a turning point in the history of our city. However, that turning point had a tragic end and very difficult circumstances to it because the site chosen for Dodger Stadium was Chavez Ravine, which was a Mexican American community. It had been there for some time.

They'd even promised that community new housing, a new kind of public housing if they moved. This was before the Dodgers came. Many families agreed to move. However, public housing wasn't popular politically in Los Angeles, so conservative forces in the city stopped that. The few remaining people who lived in Chavez Ravine were frustrated, angry and felt betrayed and they fought back. This very dramatic photograph shows a woman resisting the eviction from her home in Chavez Ravine.

One of my favorite television programs was on Channel 5. It was called "Time for Beanie". It was a puppet show. One of the great stories about "Time for Beanie" was that, at a meeting at Caltech, Albert Einstein who was a visiting professor there suddenly got up and said, "I have to leave now." People turned to him and said, "Why do you have to leave?" He said, "It's time for Beanie." From then on, the legend came that one of Albert Einstein's favorite television programs was "Time for Beanie".

Nancy Wilkman>> One of the interesting things is that, in the 1950s, most people thought that the cause of the smog was industrial, smokestacks and such. As it turned out, it really was primarily due to all the automobiles which were then coursing through Los Angeles and on the first freeways which were being built during that time. California, interestingly enough, has been the leader in trying to clean up the air. Fortunately today, our skies are bluer than they have been in a very, very long time.

This is a delightful photograph that captures the excitement and the joy of the 1984 Olympics that were held in Los Angeles. In the past, the previous years, the Olympics had really been a really money-making disaster. For the first time ever, not only did Los Angeles not go into the red on this project, but it made so much money that it was able to donate money to sports foundations and still does so today.

This picture was taken in 1994 shortly after what is known as the Northridge earthquake. During that earthquake, the upper stories collapsed down onto the ground level and sixteen people lost their lives. But this is a dramatic example of the power of earthquakes.

Jon Wilkman>> We wanted to do a book that really dealt with the city in a very sophisticated and modern way.

Nancy Wilkman>> I think that we have some really, really interesting stories, some delightful characters and some clues to help bring meaning to what this city is.

Val Zavala>> Once again, the book is called "Picturing Los Angeles" by Jon and Nancy Wilkman. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> 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.

Sponsored in part by:


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