People and Events

Charlie Turner, 83, had a surprise waiting for him Thursday morning as he trudged back down a trail in Griffith Park, where for the last 15 years he has hiked every morning and tended Dante’s View garden on the side of Mt. Hollywood.

It wasn’t that he was startled to see City Councilman John Ferraro, a bunch of photographers and about 100 other folks standing around the trailhead adjacent to the Griffith Observatory parking lot. He knew they were there to make some kind of to-do over the new landscaping.

Ferraro, acting mayor at the moment, asked Turner to help him and some firefighters lift the sheet covering a new sign. Turner, not one to shirk a job, complied.

The sign read:

Mt. Hollywood Hiking Trail

Charlie Turner Trailhead.

He looked hard. It still said the same thing.

“I am completely astonished,” said Turner, who explained that he takes care of the half-acre Dante’s View garden “simply because I enjoy the park. I hate to see bottles and cans up there. I want to keep the place clean.”

The sign was the biggest surprise he’s had, he said, since the Friends of Dante’s View gave him an airline ticket to Paris on his 80th birthday.

The results are in on L.A. West magazine’s poll of its readers as to how they feel about some former neighbors moving back to the Westside area (Bel-Air, to be specific) after a few years in Washington. Of 1,691 readers who responded, publisher Bob Loomis reports, 47.13% are happy to see Ronald and Nancy Reagan return to the Westside.

Another 34.36% don’t care.

Regardless of how they feel about having Reagan in their midst again, more than 52% indicated they feel more positively than negatively about him.

Loomis said he was “a little surprised” the President “can still pull a majority” in an area that is predominantly Democratic and elects people like Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica), Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) as well as City Councilmen Marvin Braude and Zev Yaroslavsky.

Sample pro-Reagan answer: “The presidency of Ronald Reagan will shine long after this adversary press has gone. He has changed many things, thank God!”

One of the negative responses: “I don’t care where Mr. Reagan lives, so long as it isn’t in the White House, a residence for which he was woefully underqualified.”

A couple of dozen of Reagan’s supporters said they felt the survey questions were slanted and unfair. The magazine insists the questions were composed by an independent public relations firm to avoid just that. One irate subscriber canceled her subscription.

That, the magazine says, is the same number who canceled in 1984 when it endorsed Reagan for reelection.

William A. Burke, president of the City of Los Angeles Marathon, had a small mishap on the Caribbean island of St. Martin, where he was sneaking in a little practice for next year’s New York City Marathon.

Although the 49-year-old Burke heads the L.A. race organization, he has never run in a marathon. That was too much for Fred Lebow, his New York counterpart. Lebow dared Burke to join him in the 26.2-mile Big Apple event.

Marie Patrick, vice president of the L.A. race, said Burke has been training secretly and has lost a few pounds. Vacationing on St. Martin, he went running.

A fast scorpion bit him.

His office here said he was treated at a local hospital but was not seriously injured. Just where he was bitten is not clear, but it was not on the bottom of his foot. We are assured he was wearing shoes.

The Southern California Rapid Transit District can always use a fan. Partially blind Michael Winston Churchill, 22, has become one. The RTD saw to it that he got back an important possession.

Churchill, who attends Rio Hondo College, said he was on Line 470 from downtown Los Angeles to his Whittier neighborhood Wednesday afternoon “when I happened to misplace my talking watch.”

After he got off the bus, he realized the thing had fallen out of his pocket. There was no computerized voice to tell him the time. He telephoned RTD and was connected with dispatcher Doug Cale, who radioed bus driver Alice McDonald as she tooled along a freeway.

When she got to her next stop, she found the watch and took it to the El Monte station. From there, it was delivered to Churchill’s home by road supervisor Antonio Reyes. Churchill thought that was nice.