Nursing School a Mom-Daughter Effort

Patricia Beck, a top nursing student at Santa Monica College, worked well with her co-workers and classmates at the hospital where they trained.

Her only problem was with one student, who insisted on calling her “Pattie.” It wasn’t the nickname Beck objected to, but the classmate who was using it: Beck’s daughter Lori Fitzwilliams.

“I hate kids who call their parents by their first names,” said Beck, a West Los Angeles resident who decided to return to school after a recent divorce. “She would call me ‘Pat’ and ‘Pattie,’ and I would just ignore her.”

Fitzwilliams, who lives in Culver City with her husband and two young children, said she wasn’t trying to be disrespectful to her mother, but merely to be professional. “In a hospital setting I wasn’t about to go call her, ‘Hey, Mom.’ ”

Beck, 45, and Fitzwilliams, 25, spent 2 1/2 years together in the nursing program and recently graduated with honors.

Despite the disagreement on what Beck should be called, they say being students together strengthened their relationship.

Although they never studied together, Fitzwilliams said they called on each other for emotional support throughout the rigorous period of studies and hospital work.

“She was the only one who understood what I was going through,” she said. “She knows my whole history, what’s going on with my personal life, so we could communicate with saying very little.”

Two Westside volunteers were bestowed the highest honor of the Los Angeles YMCA when they were cited to the Golden Book of Distinguished Service at a meeting in Los Angeles.

Terry R. White, a volunteer at the Westside Family YMCA, and Everett Maguire, a volunteer at the Palisades-Malibu YMCA, joined the 241 people similarly honored since the association established the award in 1934.

Lessing E. Gold, managing partner for the Century City law firm Gold, Marks, Ring & Pepper, has been appointed to the board of directors of the Shakespeare Festival of Los Angeles.

This July, the festival, a nonprofit, professional theater company dedicated to preserving and illuminating Shakespeare’s work, will present “Much Ado About Nothing.”

For the second year in a row, high school senior Asher Hung has been one of 20 students nationwide to be named a winner in the Scholastic Magazine art competition.

Hung, a Westwood resident who attends Buckley School in Sherman Oaks, will have his entry displayed in the magazine’s gallery exhibit in New York.

UCLA sociology professor Jeffrey Alexander was named the winner of the $25,000 1990 Gold Shield Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence.

The award recognized Alexander as “a teacher who transforms the mass scale of a large state university into the intensive education usually associated with a small liberal arts college.”

Alexander, a Pacific Palisades resident who is chairman of the Department of Sociology, is known for his four-volume work titled “Theoretical Logic in Sociology.”

The Beverly Hills High School Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. installed Evy Rappaport for a second term as president.

Other officers elected for the 1990-91 school year were: Sandra Bayrd, first vice president; Rivka Seiden, second vice president; Fran Behrstock, corresponding secretary; Robin Benedetti, recording secretary; and Gail Lowenstein, treasurer.

The National Women’s Political Caucus-L.A. Westside has elected Susan Romeo as its chairwoman for the 1990-91 year.

In addition, the caucus elected Joanne Parker as its administrative vice chairwoman; Deborah Reich Castleman as its vice chairwoman, political action; Morgan Lynn, treasurer; Michelle Melone, recorder, and Diane Paris and Mary Rapoport, county coordinating committee representatives.