La Cañada History: Area PGA player named Golf Professional of the Year

Ten Years Ago

La Cañada High School received a face-lift in the summer of 2004 when about 3,000 gallons of paint, most of it in the shade “Ventura Yellow” covered its previously gray walls. “I think it looks great,” said Cynthia Keech, then principal of LCHS 7/8. “It gives the school a cheerful appearance.” One student disagreed, telling a reporter that the brighter paint job hurt his eyes.

Twenty Years Ago

The town was abuzz with news that the La Cañada branch of Bank of America, which since 1956 had been a fixture at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Oakwood Avenue, would be relocated to the former location of Security Pacific National Bank at 537 Foothill Blvd. The original Bank of America building here was torn down in recent years to expand the parking lot at Plaza de La Cañada.

Thirty Years Ago

Oakwood Enterprises, a La Cañada real estate firm that had high hopes of connecting travelers attending the 1984 Summer Olympics with locals who were willing to offer their private homes as vacation rentals, reported that their efforts had been a bust. “Evidently, bad publicity about [Los Angeles] traffic and smog and crowded facilities has had a negative effect,” said the owner of the firm, who also noted that she’d had more competition than she’d anticipated from Southland hotels and had been unable to broker any deals.

Forty Years Ago

La Cañada resident Pat Rielly was named Golf Professional of the Year by the Southern California section of the PGA. Rielly was the pro at Annandale Golf Club in Pasadena.

Fifty Years Ago

The Flintridge Property Owners Assn., which for several years had been waging a “watchdog” campaign to keep the Jet Propulsion Laboratory confined to its original area, reported having received a letter from NASA Administrator James Webb that was designed to calm their fears. In it, Webb stated there were no plans for NASA to condemn the Flintridge Riding Club property, as had been rumored, so JPL could expand its facilities or parking lots.

Sixty Years Ago

It was reported that “several hundred” La Cañada residents stopped what they were doing at about 7 p.m. on a Tuesday in July 1954 to watch firefighters knock down a blaze that destroyed a two-car garage, a tool shed and parts of a wood fence near the intersection of Flanders Road and Grand Avenue. The fire was believed to have been ignited by sparks from ashes of a rubbish fire the property owner had started earlier in the day, when it was still common (and legal) for locals to burn their trash in backyard incinerators.

-- Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.