New Lung Assn. Leader Fires Up Support for No-Smoking Message

It’s time young people start feeling that it’s more adult not to smoke than to accept peer pressure to light up, and that’s the message Louise Della Bella will emphasize as she starts a two-year stint as president of the American Lung Assn. of Orange County.

“There’s a lot of peer pressure for adolescents to smoke and be accepted,” she said, “but what we’d like to do is change attitudes so that not smoking is the better message.”

Della Bella, an administrative assistant at a Santa Ana home health care and respiratory disease management center and a nine-year Lung Assn. volunteer, said it is important to get peer pressure to work in reverse as well as to teach young people how to talk to their parents to encourage them not to smoke.

“Many times it’s children who are putting pressure on their parents to stop smoking,” she said. “We find that parents feel bad when their children point out the dangers of smoking cigarettes.”

That method not only helps parents, she said, “but it also keeps reminding young people that smoking is bad.”

“We know that most people start smoking when they are in their adolescence,” she said.

Ginni Withers of Fountain Valley, who won $25,000 in the recent cross-country Great American Race by finishing first with her 1906 Mitchell in the oldest car category, has learned that she finished last overall in the 3,400-mile race.

Michael J. Messina, 30, and David Szkaradek, 30, friends since school days, have both been named Narcotics Officer of the Year by the Orange County Narcotics Officers Assn. Messina, of the Brea Police Department, and Szkaradek, of the Newport Beach force, also were classmates at the police academy at Rio Hondo College and were ranked second and third, respectively, in class standings.

At most Jewish temples, it would be unusual to hear a female cantor, but that’s all the membership at Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Fountain Valley has heard since it was organized in 1976. In fact, when Linda Ecker completed her cantorial training earlier this month, the congregation voted to hire her as its cantor full time, a role she had performed mostly on a volunteer basis since the temple opened. “Although there are a number of female cantors now singing in temples,” said Ecker, 34, the mother of three children, “a lot of people are still used to having a male chant to them. This congregation happens to be used to a woman singing for them because I’ve always been here.”

Acknowledgments--In a rare group effort, Erin Farley, 15, Jeffrey Ryskamp, 15, Dean Ruoff, 18, Tyson Sawyer, 14, Philip Schnabel, 17, and Eric Sharp, 16, all of Troop 37 of Newport Beach, earned Eagle Scout status, Boy Scouting’s highest honor. . . . Gloria Munoz of Santa Ana, with 2,000 hours of service, was named Volunteer of Year by Childrens Hospital. . . . The Jewish Federation of Orange County, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, named Eleanor J. Burg of Corona del Mar as its first woman president. . . . Carlos Romo, 18, of La Habra, was named Youth of the Year by the nine-state Pacific Region of the Boys Club of America.