Former Monterey Park Residents Rally From Around State for 5th Homecoming

They came back from around the state and the far corners of the San Gabriel Valley. Leila Donegan, Monterey Park’s first woman mayor, drove in from Mission Viejo. Norm Bidler came down from Santa Cruz, and Phil and Lucille Lopez returned from Rancho Cucamonga.

All former Monterey Park residents, they came back to town last week for an evening of reminiscing at Homecoming V, the fifth reunion of city residents since 1983. The dinner party for more than 250 people at the Luminarias restaurant also attracted current residents who wanted to welcome back friends or to make new ones.

Harold Giles, 80, sold his Monterey Park stationery store years ago, but said he regularly drives back from his Monrovia home. “My bank is here,” Giles said. “My friends are here.”

“I’ve got an awful lot of friends here,” said Rep. George Brown (D-Colton), who launched his political career on the Monterey Park City Council. “This is the only place we’ll see each other.

“The new Monterey Park is so different,” said Brown, who left the city in 1969. “The change on Atlantic Avenue is most striking.”

When Brown was on the council in the 1950s, most residents were Anglo. Descendants of European immigrants, many had moved to California with their families from the Midwest. Today, more than half of the residents are Asian, and about 30% are Latino.

Asian residents, the most recent immigrants, began settling in Monterey Park in the early 1980s, bringing changes that drew mixed reactions from older residents. Newcomers and long-term residents have clashed over issues such as development, traffic and use of Asian languages on business signs.

It has been a period of difficult adjustments. The clashes captured enough notoriety to attract the attention of a group of UCLA sociologists, who filmed last week’s homecoming as part of a research project funded by the Ford Foundation.

“We had some problems in the beginning,” said Norman Lieberman, an attorney and former writer for the Monterey Park Progress. “A very small part of the population resented that the city is changing.

“I think it’s nothing unusual,” Lieberman said. “All it takes is time for people to get used to each other.”

At the banquet last Friday night, Anglo, Latino and Asian residents chatted over chicken and fish dinners.

The friction and strife that have marked the city’s recent transitions have subsided somewhat. In his speech at the banquet Friday night, Lieberman felt comfortable enough to poke fun at it with a bit of daring humor.

Sparing no ethnic stereotypes and liberally lampooning local politicians, he had the audience laughing about past turmoil. “The fact is, we’re still here,” Lieberman said. “We have a vibrant city.”

Others, such as homecoming organizer Agnes Arakawa, also marveled at the changes in the city over the years.

In 1959, when she decided to leave her Westside neighborhood, Arakawa said, she looked for a community that would give her the small-town feel of her native Hawaii. She first tried Lakewood, but a real estate broker there told her the company did not sell to Asians. In Monterey Park, she said, an agent told her: “Oh, we are just starting to sell to Orientals.”

Now an active community volunteer, Arakawa said she tried not to let such encounters bother her. Most of those who attended the homecoming also preferred to downplay other trying moments in the city’s past.