Seeing the Light After a Fiery Tragedy

Fire destroyed Hope Lutheran Church at 6720 Melrose Ave. three years ago, and flames are being used to help rebuild it.

Since last Friday, sculptor Todd Vander Pluym II and volunteers have been working with about 160 tons of sand to re-create the old city of Jerusalem on the front patio of the house of worship, which is being reconstructed.

Buildings in the two-story sand creation, which is taking roughly a week to complete, will include about 1,000 miniature windows. Beginning at 7 p.m. Sunday (Palm Sunday) , a candle will be lit in each of those windows. The money donated to sponsor each candle will go toward defraying the cost of rebuilding the church, which is nearing completion, according to the pastor, Mark Rasbach.

The candles will be extinguished later each evening and lit again nightly through Easter Sunday.

And, it is hoped, there will be a new definition of candlepower.

Some Old Stories

The Benjamin Franklin Branch Library at 2200 East 1st St., the oldest community branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, observed its 70th anniversary a few weeks ago.

City librarian Wyman Jones said that in 1889 a group of Boyle Heights residents formed a library association and began neighborhood book service in a small reading room. In 1910, Benjamin Franklin was established in temporary quarters as the first branch of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Six years later, a permanent facility was constructed with funds from the Andrew Carnegie Library Foundation. During the severe earthquake of 1971, the branch suffered extensive damage and was forced to close.

It opened in a new building two years ago, retaining the same name, occasionally turning over a new leaf.

Saying It in Red

“No Bump, Chump,” one of the red-lettered and illuminated messages says.

This is “Tell-A-Tail,” an innovation to comply in style with the federal regulation that took effect last year requiring that a third brake light--at eye level--be installed in the rear of all cars built after 1985.

“Tell-A-Tail” is the brainchild of three Southlanders, Eric Hansen, 28, Jonathan Baker, 24, and Joe Porter, 42. The devices are being made by the thousands in their Platinum Industries plant in Cerritos, and retail for about $20.

“Any 14-character message can be created from among the 65 available characters, and the message may be changed by the motorist at any time,” Hansen explained. “People are using personal messages, corporate slogans, you name it. One woman’s says: ‘I to Party.’ ”

When the brake pedal is pressed, the announcement flashes.

Young at Heart . . .

Who says spring is reserved for what a young man’s fancy is supposed to turn to? How about an 85-year-old bridegroom and a 72-year-old bride?

Those are the ages of the couple who will be married Wednesday on the patio of the Golden Crest Retirement Hotel in West Hollywood, where both were residents and where both met.

Frieda Bloch, the bride, was born in Czechoslovakia, migrated to Israel, and came to Los Angeles about 30 years ago.

Leo Werner, the bridegroom, was born in Austria, fled from the Nazis in 1939, came to the United States and was an accountant for the city of Los Angeles until his retirement in 1970.

A Presidential Hookup

It isn’t everybody who gets a signed letter from the President, but then it isn’t everybody who sends him a belt buckle that strikes his fancy.

In thanking Al Shelton of Studio City for the bronze Statue of Liberty buckle sent to the White House, Reagan wrote: “It fits perfectly on the belt you handcrafted for me a number of years ago. . . . “

The 65-year-old Shelton said he numbers celebrities galore--Sally Field, Gene Autry, Dinah Shore, Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone--among the customers at his Al Shelton-Western Artist place of business.

“I had been in custom leather work until 1972, when I began crafting buckles,” he said. His Statue of Liberty version, which sells for $100 and will be produced only until July 4, shows the Liberty Queen flanked by a tablet inscribed July 4, 1776 and by the torch she holds aloft.

Shelton said he has sculpted more than 100 wax models for buckles, which have resulted in more than 30,000 of the finished products being in circulation.

Flight of a Bouncing Bird

Artist Dave Quick seems determined to make a rubber chicken fly.

Creator of, among other things, the “Vienna Bulls’ Choir”--16 white plastic 1/12-scale bulls that dance to a three-minute-long rendition of “Lullaby on Broadway”--and a public access television show (which starred him and his pregnant wife) called “Name that Baby,” the Los Angeles resident is now determined to launch a rubber chicken into space.

“It is a fairly serious proposal,” he said. His preliminary work on Poullus Galactus, or chicken in space, includes models of a plump fryer orbiting a globe and a rubber chicken made space worthy with solar reflectors. His plans are on display in the “Toying Around” exhibit at the Junior Arts Gallery in Barnsdall Park.

So far, all he has to show for his troubles are friendly, yet firm rejections of the project from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), an April, 1985, crew member on the space shuttle. The chicken in space proposal has also been reviewed--and rejected--by the Japanese Space Development Agency.

Undaunted, he plans to query space officials in Canada.

“I have a feeling that sooner or later it is going to go,” he said.

Quick said that if his chicken does make it into space, he envisions it being equipped with a ham radio transmitter enabling ham radio operators throughout the world to tune in as the chicken orbits overhead.

Ham and chicken always did go well together.