Buddy Ebsen Is Grand Marshal : Runs to Benefit Crippled Children

The wind blew out the candles on Buddy Ebsen’s cake Tuesday before he did. But the 77-year-old actor’s birthday wish lighted up the faces of a group of crippled children in Woodland Hills.

“I wish you all better health,” he said as youngsters presented him with a gaily decorated cake. Turning to grinning adults standing nearby, Ebsen wished them good luck.

The onlookers were members of Agoura and Calabasas-area homeowner groups who will stage races of 5 and 10 kilometers for the youngsters on April 14. It will follow a route through the Santa Monica Mountains’ Malibu Creek State Park and will be followed by a “celebrity walk” for non-runners.

Camp to Benefit

The proceeds will be split between Camp Joan Mier, a crippled children’s summer camp, and the Las Virgenes Homeowners’ Federation, a coalition of 14 neighborhood associations that works to control development within a 100-square-mile area between Woodland Hills and Westlake Village.

The race itself shapes up to be an equally home-grown affair, the homeowners acknowledged.

Agoura Hills artist John Perry has contributed 84 small plastic sculptures of a runner to be awarded to the winners. Homeowners have been recruited to wear 16-foot-tall inflated animal suits constructed by Perry to spice up the races.

The estimated 700 competitors will receive shirts bearing a “Run for the Hills” logo that was designed by Dennis Washburn, a Calabasas advertising executive who heads the federation.

Grand Marshal

Ebsen, who owns a 36-acre Agoura horse ranch, will be the event’s grand marshal. He will hand out the trophies.

Thomas Yacavone, whose neighborhood is near Ebsen’s Liberty Canyon-area ranch, said he involved the star of “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Barnaby Jones” and the current “Matt Houston” television series in an equally neighborly way. He picked up the telephone and called Ebsen.

Later, actors Tony Dow, Leslie Easterbrook, Jean Bruce Scott and Lucinda Dickey were recruited for the celebrity walk, said Yacavone, a Valley College sociology professor.

Chris Vicars, an Agoura Hills resident who is a former federation president, said her group’s share of the proceeds will go toward “building up our expertise on growth in the mountains.”

Free ‘Camperships’

She said her organization is concerned that the rural atmosphere in the mountain area is being “irretrievably lost.”

Mark Gray, director of the eight-acre Camp Joan Mier in Malibu, said the estimated $2,500 the camp will receive from the race will go toward free “camperships” for needy crippled children. Its 300 summertime campers are assessed $390 fees for their 10-day stays to help defray the facility’s $250,000 per-season operating cost. The camp is owned by the Crippled Children’s Society.

Gray said the homeowners are the first group to help with the camp’s expenses since he became its director five years ago.

BUDDY CAPTION