New Role for Anti-AIDS Activist

Jewel Thais-Williams, owner of Catch One, a mid-Wilshire dance club with a primarily gay clientele, wasn’t content with her club being merely a spot for dancing and casual conversation. So for years she has involved the club in educating patrons and the public about the dangers of AIDS.

She and her partner, Rue Thais-Williams, have held fund-raisers at the Pico Boulevard club and sponsored Minority AIDS Project education tables and screenings of safe sex videos.

Jewel Thais-Williams says that AIDS education is especially urgent to her because many of her customers are black or Latino men, two groups that have been hit disproportionately by the disease.

“I don’t think we have nearly enough (AIDS) information going out,” said Thais-Williams, who earlier this year was named 1990 Woman of the Year by Christopher Street West/Los Angeles, organizers of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Pride Festival and Parade.

“What I see going on at the club is that there are too many minority men who don’t want to hear about AIDS education, don’t want to hear about being tested or about safe sex,” she said.

Today, Thais-Williams, 51, who worked as a clothing boutique owner, a grocery checker and a sheriff’s deputy before opening Catch One 18 years ago, has been given an even greater opportunity to promote AIDS education--she was recently elected to the board of directors of AIDS Project Los Angeles.

She said she is pleased that there is more acceptance and concern about people with AIDS than in the past.

“But we can’t be complacent about it,” the Baldwin Hills resident said. “There’s still a big fight going on.”

Pacific Palisades resident Jerve Jones has been named chairman of Gala 1990, the fourth annual fund-raiser for the Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center Foundation.

The black-tie event will be held Oct. 27 at the Filmland Corporate Center, 10000 Washington Blvd., in Culver City.

Jones, a member of the foundation’s board of directors, is chief executive officer of Peck/Jones Construction in Westwood.

The Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute has announced the election of Dr. Arnold L. Gilberg to a two-year term as president.

In addition to his full-time practice of adult psychiatry and psychoanalysis and his work at the Beverly Hills-based institute, Gilberg is a member of the clinical faculty at the UCLA School of Medicine and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Gilberg succeeds Dr. Norman D. Tabachnick.

Although she has already graduated, Culver City High School Homecoming Queen Lauren Reynolds will have a chance to extend her reign later this month when she competes in the 10th annual America’s Homecoming Queen Pageant.

Reynolds, who was elected queen in November, was chosen from among 95 other homecoming queens statewide to represent California in the national pageant, which will be held July 25-31 in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The former Culver City student body president plans to attend the University of San Diego to pursue degrees in communications and economics.

Loyola Marymount University has selected Gerald T. McLaughlin, an associate dean at Brooklyn Law School, as the new dean of Loyola Law School. He will begin his duties in January, 1991.

McLaughlin, a graduate of Fordham University and the New York University School of Law, will succeed Arthur Frakt, dean since 1982.

Law Prof. Frederick J. Lower Jr. will be interim dean until McLaughlin assumes the post.

Pepperdine University has hired Richard Riehl, former trainer for the U.S. Soccer Federation, as its head athletic trainer.

Riehl, a graduate of Cal State Chico and the University of North Carolina, was an assistant athletic trainer at Duke University before being hired by the federation in 1988.

Riehl replaces Dale Rudd, who left Pepperdine last month to serve as UCLA’s coordinator of athletic training and rehabilitation.