Residents Come to Grips With a Cause

Scenes from Hands Across Orange County:

It was the perfect outing for the socially conscious family. Take the kids to Disneyland and do a good deed all at once. But Mark Henry, 8, North Hollywood, took all the hubbub in stride. Mark wore a white Disney version of the Hands T-shirt and stood in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, where the human chain snaked through the amusement park.

Like the boy himself, his remarks on the event were short and to the point.

Why are you here, he was asked. “My Mom brought me here.” Do you know who this is for? “Poor people.” Do you want to help poor people? “Yes.” Why? An incredulous look shot across his young face, and, in a why-are-you-wasting-my-time tone of voice, he answered: “ Because they’re poor .”

When the third and final song, “America the Beautiful,” was played, the collective voice of the Disneyland crowd swelled. But it waned suddenly when people discovered that no one seemed to know the song’s second verse.

That didn’t seem to matter. At the event’s climax, the crowd cheered anyway as dozens of white pigeons were released among 5,000 red, white and blue balloons.

Allison Orgill, 26, Costa Mesa, wore red shorts, a red-white-and-blue Hands T-shirt and a white visor as she stood in line outside the Crystal Cathedral.

“I’m here to help feed the hungry and find homes for the homeless, and besides, I’m into hands,” she said. “I’m a hand therapist.”

An occupational therapist specializing in rehabilitation of hands damaged in traumatic accidents, Orgill even has a car that advertises her message. Its license plate reads: “4HANDS.”

“If you couldn’t hold hands today, you should come to see me,” she said.

As hand-holders on Katella Avenue in Orange began singing “America the Beautiful,” an Orange County Transit District bus chugged by, spewing noxious fumes. As the bus passed the group, one elderly rider pointed a shaky arm toward the crowd outside and smiled broadly at her seatmate.

But that wasn’t the bus’s only contribution to the charity stunt. A bit farther ahead, the bus driver slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting a sinuous wave of hand-holders that had surged forward.

Jennifer Enderby of Orange, a 33-year-old retired teacher of deaf children, held 14-month-old Trevor, who waved his miniature U.S. flag dangerously close to anyone who passed within range.

“He loves flags,” Enderby said with a slight shrug, as her husband, Oz, 40, leaped forward to deflect its sharp tip.

The Enderby family contributed $75 to the Hands Across America campaign, with mom and dad both sporting official T-shirts, pins and sun visors.

“We came because we think it’s a worthwhile cause to help feed hungry people,” Jennifer Enderby explained,. “We’ve got everything we could possibly want; now we want to help others if we can.”

Trevor wasn’t the only flag freak on the Hands route Sunday, where the mood alternated between the euphoric and the patriotic, with hand-holders forming cancan lines and occasionally stepping out of formation to click each others’ pictures.

“I’m here to participate in an American event,” said Don Crenshaw, 38, of Yorba Linda, as he stood in front of a huge U.S. flag flying from a flagpole in Anaheim Hills.

And nearby, Emma Blakley, 31, of Westminster, bubbled with the excitement of it all.

“Ain’t it great?!” she exclaimed, standing next to her four-foot American flag. “I can’t believe there aren’t more flags. This is the day for it.”

Zed Vickers, 51, of Santa Ana, contributed $35 each for the four in his family, and they all proudly displayed their Hands Across America T-shirt, visor and pin.

Asked why he had decided to join in, the used car salesman said, “to help the poor in America for a change.”

“I think it has a better chance than some of the other programs of really helping the people who need it,” Vickers said as he lined up in Orange.

Elsewhere on Katella Avenue, a group from the Irvine neighborhoods of Woodbridge and University Park lined up and linked hands early, hesitantly singing the words to “Hands Across America.”

They were posing for Sandy Taylor, a 44-year-old investment counselor from Irvine, who was so busy staring through the viewer of her instamatic camera that she didn’t notice the oncoming cars that had to swerve to avoid her.

“We need your hands; get out of the street!” Gayle Tripp, 35, of Santa Ana, shouted at Taylor.

Moments before noon, a sad-faced Daria Holderness drifted away from her spot in line not far from the boisterous Irvine group. She sat Indian style on the grass beneath a eucalyptus tree and began nursing her two-month-old daughter, Carol.

The 19-year-old woman, fresh from Yuma, Ariz., had been living with her husband and baby at the Christian Temporary Housing Facility shelter for families for nearly a month. She said neither of them had any job prospects.

“I think it’s pretty nice, I guess,” she said of the day’s celebration, then quickly averted her eyes as they started to fill with tears.

Times staff writers Kristina Lindgren, Mark Landsbaum and Sheldon Ito contributed to this report.