Gulf Holiday Is Just Another Day at the Office for Many

It was a holiday. And Lisa Scharfenberg was in a holiday mood Friday as she cruised along Malibu beach in her sporty red car with its open sun roof and the “Support Our Troops” sign in the back window.

But Scharfenberg, a 21-year-old college sophomore from Reno, was stumped over exactly what holiday it was.

“Is it spring break?” she asked.

Actually, Friday was the first of three “national days of thanksgiving” proclaimed by President Bush to celebrate the quick end to the Persian Gulf War.

For some lucky workers in courthouses and city offices, the day was a surprise paid holiday. To most people, however, it was more of a phantom holiday.

“Until the last minute, we were hoping we’d have the day off,” said Tina Naghshineh, a clerk at the Federal Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. “The President did say it was a national day of thanksgiving, right?”

Naghshineh, who leaves her Riverside home at 5:15 a.m. each day for work, said she would have been thankful for the opportunity to sleep late for a change.

Despite the proclamation, all federal courts and offices were open as usual Friday. So were state offices. But some state courts were closed--at least those that interpret the state government code as saying that a day of thanksgiving in April is just like the real Thanksgiving in November.

At the Los Angeles Superior Court, only a handful of judges and commissioners were at work. Marbled hallways that are usually teeming with witnesses and defendants and lawyers were virtually empty--except for Hector Meneses.

Meneses, of North Whittier, is an alternate juror on a burglary case. He was cooling his heels on a hallway bench while the regular jurors struggled to reach a verdict.

They had been urged to forgo the holiday by court Commissioner H. Ronald Hauptman as their contribution to unsnarling the court’s backlog. Hauptman was sitting in his chambers, puffing on a cigar and thinking of his daughter and grandchildren as he waited.

“It was up in the air until late yesterday whether the courthouse would be open,” Hauptman said. “I’d have used the occasion today to visit my grandchildren in La Canada. But I’m not missing not having the day off because I hadn’t counted on it in the first place.”

In the courthouse elevator, Laura Hamilton was viewing the holiday as a national day of confusion.

The Gardena resident had been scheduled to attend a child dependency hearing on Friday.

“When I heard on TV that offices might be closed, I called down here and the court people said all of the courtrooms would be shut,” she said.

“But to make sure, I called the division my case is in this morning and they said they were open. So I drove up here. And when I got here, they told me that my case had been postponed to July 3 because of the holiday.”

Although some cities such as Burbank gave workers the day off, it was business as usual at Los Angeles City Hall. Community relations consultant Jerry Freedman Habush of Van Nuys paused beneath a 15-foot American flag in the City Hall rotunda and sipped a cup of coffee.

“I’m thankful we were able to achieve a dignified peace,” he said. “But a holiday like this needs to be planned a lot more in advance.”

Back in Malibu, the visitor in the red sedan with the sunroof was in total agreement with that.

“It should have been publicized more,” Scharfenberg said, dusting off the yellow ribbon printed on her car’s window sign. “We owe a lot to our troops.”