L.A. Chapter of Kiwanis Goes Co-Ed With CPA

When Cheryl Lane was recently voted into the Los Angeles chapter of Kiwanis International, she was less surprised than some of her peers.

“When I heard that they were opening up membership to women (the group voted down its men-only rule last year), I thought it was about time,” the 40-year-old certified public accountant said. “It’s not that it made me angry; it just seemed illogical to me that if you have the talent, something as insignificant as gender would cause you not to be part of a group that has common goals.”

Lane had previously been involved with Kiwanis, speaking at school programs and other community gatherings. She was invited to join the service organization by a friend, and was voted in by the all-male membership in December.

Lane said she’s used to being “the first woman or one of very few women” in male-dominated realms. “I joined the Air Force out of high school and was one of two women a year they sent through the air-traffic-controller program. As a CPA, I’m in a very male-dominated profession. There is not a large percentage of women who are principals in Big Eight accounting firms,” she said.

“I entered the profession because when I got divorced I needed an income that was equal to what men were earning,” she said. “I would say I’m an assertive person and I think anything a woman wants to do she should be able to try. If that’s the definition of a feminist, then I guess I am one.”

Shortly after being voted into the Kiwanis, Lane and her two teen-age sons moved to Northern California where she is a principal in the real estate advisory group at the Arthur Young accounting firm in San Francisco. Previously she had been a senior manager in the tax department of Touche Ross & Co., a Los Angeles accounting firm.

Lane said she “fully intends to transfer her membership” as soon as she finishes unpacking.

After Recovering From a Stroke, She’ll Spin the Spokes

A 49-year-old Ontario woman, once so crippled by a stroke that crawling to the bathroom was a triumph, sets out today to bicycle 600 miles to Sacramento in a effort to prove that “there is life after a stroke.”

Veronica McKeen, mother of two, was 23 when stricken. “I was in a coma for five days, I was paralyzed and I was terrified. How many 23-year-olds really know what a stroke is? The frustration was unbearable.”

For 12 years she “vegetated,” deteriorating physically and depressed mentally. Today, “I walk with a slight limp, and that’s about it. Rehabilitation required a great deal of will power. You either sit back and listen to the doctors, or you listen to your body. Too often, strokers retreat into themselves. It’s easy, and it’s understandable. But I made another choice.”

McKeen, who began training in earnest three years ago, made a two-day, 124-mile bike run to San Diego last year, and had planned to ride across the country until plans fell through for lack of financial support. “It’s still in the offing,” she said, with the Sacramento safari something of a warm-up. She will be riding under the banner of the Organization for After-Stroke Resocialization of Glendora.

“Age or disability has nothing to do with it,” McKeen said. “Whether you’re 20, 30 or 70, you can tell yourself, ‘I still have some life left, and it’s up to nobody else but myself.’ ”

Bicyclist’s Off-the-Wall Dream Is Finally On

Sixteen years ago, Kevin Foster squirmed and fidgeted like any other 12-year-old through a school assignment: Watch a film on President Nixon in China and write a report on his meeting with Mao. Foster, though, saw something else in the film: “When Mao took Nixon to the Great Wall of China, I said, ‘Wow, man! Look at that thing!’ ” A dream was born.

It took 15 years, but Foster, now a 28-year-old actor living in Ojai, finally won permission from the Chinese government to bicycle the Great Wall. He’s off in June, and expects to pedal 2,000 miles, starting in Inner Mongolia and ending at the coast, “just in time for the Seoul Olympics and only 300 nautical miles away.”

“First I wrote to Nixon,” Foster said, but received no encouragement. “Over the years, I kept asking Chinese embassies and consulates for permission, but they were otherwise occupied--the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s death, the Gang of Four. Last year, they came through. A friend in Connecticut suggested I get some backing. The National Geographic wrote a letter of recommendation, and I’m off!”

The Wall, Foster noted, is 4,500 miles long, but his trek is truncated since it passes through a number of “sensitive areas.” No matter. The lone journey has also grown into quite a pack: a fellow rider, Chinese; a photographer (“I have a book contract”); a jeepload of provisions . . . No matter.

“A dream is a dream,” Foster said. “I have a shelf full of them. The wall’s only the first.”