La Canada history: Man died, homes destroyed in Santa Ana winds

Ten Years Ago

New inductees to the La Cañada High School Athletic Hall of Fame in January 2004 were Jacki Tenerelli Asplund, Class of 1995; Sarah Ellis, Class of 1997; Matthew Moore, Class of 1998 and Brendan Naeve, Class of 1998.

Twenty Years Ago

It was announced no La Cañada Flintridge City Council election would be held in the spring of 1994 because no one other than incumbents Joan Feehan, Jim Edwards and Jack Hastings had filed to run. The election’s cancellation saved the city $30,000.

Thirty Years Ago

Warm, dry Santa Ana winds that were reported to have reached 100 mph swept through La Cañada Flintridge beginning on Jan. 26, 1984, toppling huge trees and power poles. Windows were blasted out at stores along Foothill Boulevard, but far more damage was sustained when brush fires started by arcing power lines destroyed four La Cañada homes — on Harter Lane, El Vago Street and Alta Canyada Road — and damaged 10 others. A 37-year-old man, Ted Lievense, who had grown up in this town, died of a broken neck after his Volkswagen van was swept off Angeles Crest Highway by gale-force winds. He had been in the area to check on the safety of his parents.

Forty Years Ago

The Shopping Bag, which opened in 1948 as La Cañada’s first supermarket, closed its doors on Jan. 26, 1974. Its building at the corner of Foothill Boulevard and Beulah Drive later became Sport Chalet’s flagship store and headquarters. Today it houses a Sprouts Farmers Market.

Fifty Years Ago

Except for some minor work, all four buildings at La Cañada High School, which had opened its doors to its first students in the fall of 1963, were officially completed, it was reported at a January 1964 meeting of the La Cañada school board.

Sixty Years Ago

T. Fenton Knight, a pioneer La Cañada resident and a controversial figure in the school unification campaign of the early 1950s (he was against it), urged unity in the interests of education and pushed for the Pasadena school board to construct a new high school for La Cañada on the former site of the Spalding equestrian property along Oak Grove Drive. Instead, unification was achieved several years later and the new La Cañada Unified School District built its own high school in the same location as Knight had earlier proposed.

-- Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci