STUDENT-PRIEST WINS LOYOLA’S LILA GARRETT PEACE AWARD

A communications graduate student who is also a priest was presented with the first $2,500 Lila Garrett Peace Award at Loyola Marymount College on Wednesday, given for motion picture and television scripts written by students there “which best promote peace through non-violence.”

Seamus McLaughlin OSM won for “Only Our Rivers Run Free,” a film script about a Protestant girl, a Catholic boy, their families and “the tragic futility of the continuing Irish revolution,” according to Donald J. Zirpola, head of the Communications/Arts Division at Loyola.

A second cash prize of $2,500 for a TV script was not given because none qualified, Zirpola said. It will be added to next year’s award pool, bringing the total to $7,500.

Garrett, an Emmy Award-winning TV writer and producer, said that she created the award to “make peace as profitable as war.”

“The cause of peace has to go begging,” she said. “Anybody can write a ‘Rambo.’ Anybody can explode a country. Solving a problem through peace takes a lot more time and talent.”

Garrett had a twofold purpose in giving the awards--to promote peace and to get the students’ work considered by professionals in the entertainment industry who might help them get jobs.

The first-year judges were screenwriter Ernest Lehman; Lisa Weinstein, producer of “War Games”; Shelley List and Jonathan Estrin, supervising producers for “Cagney & Lacey”; Rowland Perkins, an agent with Creative Artists Agency, and Garrett.

Bryan Constans, an undergraduate majoring in communication arts, received an honorable mention for “Rebound,” a love story involving an American girl and a Soviet basketball player.