Orange County’s Thoughts Were Overseas, Overhead : Review: Victory in the Gulf brought the soldiers back to loved ones. Rain provided some drought relief.

It was an unsettling way to inaugurate a new year: praying for peace, hoping for rain.

Thousands of local Marines were poised for battle in the Persian Gulf, and throughout Orange County, people awaited word of war overseas. At the same time, they looked anxiously to their own skies--searching not for missiles, but for raindrops, to end five consecutive years of drought.

Then, breaking the anxiety, came two deluges: Desert Storm and the March Miracle. In one, Orange County troops stormed into a faraway desert and emerged victorious. In the other, torrents of snow and rain supplied enough water to help the region squeak through the summer.

In many ways, 1991 was a back-to-basics year, when Orange County residents were forced to worry about things they had long taken for granted. Peace. Prosperity. Water. Growth. Even garbage.

Local businesses long considered to be recession-proof were battered by a deepening economic plunge. Orange County developers faced an unprecedented groundswell of opposition as local environmentalists got tough. And recycling mania swept the area as most residents were issued bins and barrels by cities forced by a new law to ease up on garbage sent to landfills.

It was a year of symbols.

Yellow ribbons fluttered from pickup trucks as well as Mercedes-Benzes. Water-savers were dropped into toilet tanks and screwed onto showers everywhere from family bathrooms to the Disneyland Hotel. A songbird small enough to fit in the palm of a hand had the state’s most powerful developers in an uproar.

Slogans abounded. Support Our Troops! Save the Gnatcatcher! Stop the tax! Free the foxes! It was the mother of all wars. The mother of all droughts. The mother of all recessions.

The year was also marked by episodes of seething hatred and grisly violence. There were Nazi salutes and racist graffiti in a county that set a record last year for reported hate crimes. A blaze of gunfire from a disgruntled employee left one person dead and two wounded at Fairview Developmental Center, a state hospital in Costa Mesa. Distraught mothers killed their children, including the wife of a Marine aviator who had fought in the Persian Gulf. A jealous husband was accused of poisoning his wife, and a newlywed was charged with hacking her husband to pieces, which she then collected in garbage bags.

When 1991 began, another long, dry winter--the fifth in a row--was half over, and reservoirs were lower than ever.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California cut its water deliveries first by 10%, then 17%, then an alarming 31%. Some Orange County cities hired water cops to ensure that people didn’t sprinkle their lawns in the daytime. Neighbors spied on neighbors. People thought before they flushed.

Suddenly, at the very end of the so-called rainy season, storms pounded the state with rain and snow. A tornado swept in from the ocean and touched down in Huntington Beach in late March, ripping roofs apart and uprooting trees. The water from the persistent storm systems helped Southern California get through the summer, although reservoirs and aquifers remain abnormally low and the prospect of a sixth dry year looms.

Speaking of summer, disappointed Orange County beach-goers dubbed it “the summer that never was.” The season was dominated by overcast skies and cool weather. Although a bad break for tourists, the weather blessed Orange County with the cleanest smog season in recent history and prompted dramatic drops in water usage.

For Orange County developers, 1991 was the most disturbing year in memory. The recession was difficult enough, and then there was a tiny, blue-gray bird named the California gnatcatcher.

Environmentalists petitioned state and federal wildlife agencies to protect the bird, claiming up to 90% of its habitat in California has disappeared due to development. Developers and builders counterattacked by questioning the environmentalists’ research, asserting that the bird is not at risk and claiming that protection would devastate the local economy.

The state Fish and Game Commission, meeting in August, declined to put the bird on the state list, ruling that it wasn’t endangered. Six days later, federal wildlife officials decided the opposite, proposing to list the bird as a national endangered species. A final decision is due in 1992.

As the gnatcatcher controversy raged, the Irvine Co., Orange County’s largest landowner, battled a slow-growth movement on its own original turf, the city of Irvine. A measure that would have stopped a proposed 3,850-unit housing development called Westpark II was narrowly defeated by a few hundred votes.

Meanwhile, the Walt Disney Co. found itself courted by two cities, Anaheim and Long Beach, vying for new Disney attractions.

After months of courtship, Disney chose Anaheim. The proposed $3-billion resort would include a world’s fair-type park called Westcot Center, patterned after Epcot Center at Walt Disney World in Florida. It would be built on the parking lot now serving the park. Anaheim, however, will have to put its money where its mouth is, because the city is being asked to spend as much as $1 billion for new parking garages, streets and other area improvements.

Politics were topsy-turvy in Orange County in 1991, and it all stemmed from Pete Wilson’s departure from the U.S. Senate.

In January, the newly elected governor yanked John Seymour from the state Senate and--to the surprise of everyone, including Seymour--dropped the former Anaheim mayor into the U.S. Senate seat that Wilson had vacated. The move set off a series of special elections in Orange County that lasted most of the year: Assemblyman John R. Lewis (R-Orange) won Seymour’s vacant seat, and Lewis’ seat was then filled by conservative activist Mickey R. Conroy.

Some musical chairs are still being played. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) is challenging Seymour for his seat in the Republican primary next June. And state Sen. Edward R. Royce (R-Anaheim) will seek the open House seat left by Dannemeyer. If he wins, then his seat is up for grabs too.

Local politicians found that 1991 ends with many of the same problems that dogged them when the year began, most notably one that has bedeviled the county for more than a decade.

Sheriff Brad Gates and the county supervisors swung hard, but missed, in a move to settle the issue of jail overcrowding. At the sheriff’s request, the supervisors authorized Measure J, a May ballot proposal that would have created a half-cent sales tax to pay for new jails, in particular one proposed for Gypsum Canyon.

But coming on the heels of Gov. Wilson’s announcement of a statewide sales tax hike, the proposal was overwhelmingly defeated. By October, the board had voted to drop Gypsum Canyon as a jail site--without naming another one.

Gates is still faced with the threat of serving a sentence in his own jail. Angered by the sheriff’s early release of prisoners to relieve overcrowding, Municipal Court judges cited Gates for contempt of court, found him guilty and ordered him to spend 30 days in jail and pay a $17,000 fine.

But Gates, who complained that he was “caught between a rock and a hard spot,” argued that with a federal court order limiting jail population, he simply had no alternative. A Superior Court judge agreed and voided his sentence. Municipal Court judges appealed, and the case is still awaiting resolution.

County supervisors also struggled in 1991 with declining state and federal support. The reductions, coupled with the recession, cut deeply into local government revenue and triggered the first county government layoffs in 13 years.

More than 200 positions were eliminated, and though most workers found jobs elsewhere in the government, a handful got pink slips. Scrambling to overcome a $67-million shortfall, county supervisors cut a few popular programs, including the Commission on the Status of Women, which folded.

A budget crunch also forced the UC Board of Regents in March to threaten to close UCI Medical Center, the county’s only teaching hospital, because of huge deficits stemming from a flood of uninsured, indigent patients.

But the county at the last minute came through with a $1.9-million reprieve, which helped the medical center pay its bills and end the year in the black for the first time in five years. The money, however, amounts to little more than a bandage for a hospital that suffers chronic fiscal pain.

Elsewhere, county health officials trying to balance their budget proposed eliminating interpreters for Asian patients, trimming a venereal disease clinic and closing 20 children’s clinics. But after an outcry by health advocates and Indochinese leaders, county officials in September scraped up $700,000 to run the targeted programs after all.

In a year that marked the 10th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS, Magic Johnson announced that he is HIV-positive, and local medical officials struggled with a crush of people wanting to be tested for acquired immune deficiency syndrome. By the end of November, the number of people in Orange County diagnosed with the deadly disease since 1981 climbed to 1,785, including 11 children.

As with most institutions dependent on the financially strapped state of California, public colleges and universities had a tough year too. Most were forced to balance budget cuts against record demand.

Cal State Fullerton cut its course offerings, expanded enrollment in existing courses and instituted 7 a.m. and weekend classes to help meet the demand. Students were limited in the number of courses they could take, and many complained bitterly that they would have to delay graduation. Orange County’s eight community colleges, meanwhile, staggered under the overflow of Cal State students who couldn’t get the classes they needed, plus recession-motivated students seeking new skills. 1991 seemed to be a benchmark year only for Chapman College, which shed an unpopular president, got a new one from within faculty ranks and changed its name to Chapman University to reflect its broader mission.

Hit by the same budget woes as their colleagues in higher education, officials at nine Orange County school districts turned to taxation and triggered a revolt.

School boards discovered that, using a little-known state law, they could levy annual fees on property owners ranging from $20 to $45 to maintain such school recreational facilities as tennis courts and baseball diamonds, often used by the rest of the community.

Several districts, led by Orange Unified, approved the fees, known as maintenance assessment districts, or were seriously considering them. But large crowds of anti-tax crusaders gathered at school board meetings, yelling and cursing the members. Legal challenges followed.

Trustees buckled under the intense pressure, and by the end of summer, the sure-fire solution was dead. Those school boards that were on the verge of approving the assessment districts quickly dropped them. And those that had already approved them quickly rescinded them.

One high school teacher mounted a crusade of another sort. Biology teacher John Peloza, a “born-again” Christian, filed a lawsuit alleging that the Capistrano Unified School District was violating his constitutional rights by forcing him to teach evolution. The case is still pending.

Twin 10-year-old brothers also alleged that their rights concerning religion were violated--but they are atheists instead of creationists. Michael and William Randall of Anaheim Hills sued the Cub Scouts after they were expelled from their troop, alleging that they had been forced to use the word God in the traditional Scout oath. The trial began in November and is continuing.

The county’s most famous evangelist, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller, collapsed while en route to the Soviet Union and underwent brain surgery in the Netherlands. He reportedly had hit his head on the roof of a car. He assured his followers that he would be back, and he was, returning to his popular pulpit at the Crystal Cathedral in November.

In Santa Ana, homeless people who congregate around the Civic Center won a legal victory in February when a judge ruled that police had discriminated against them. In widely publicized sweeps, police had arrested the homeless for such offenses as jaywalking, tearing leaves from trees and dropping pieces of paper.

A little girl from El Toro was also victorious in court when a jury ordered the county to pay her more than $2 million. Laura Small, 5 at the time, was mauled by a mountain lion at a county wilderness park in 1986. Five years later, the jury found the county to blame for failing to warn her parents of the risks.

But all close encounters with wildlife were not nightmarish. A family of red foxes living in Orange County captured the hearts of animal lovers in April, just a few days after Earth Day.

A construction worker found the foxes in a den on a new stretch of the Costa Mesa Freeway, just days before it was set to open to traffic. Biologists from the state Fish and Game Department decided to leave them, saying the wily creatures were adept at dodging urban obstacles and were better off there than in a zoo. They also said red foxes didn’t deserve special attention because they are non-native nuisances that prey upon many of the area’s endangered birds.

But about 1,000 calls flooded the Fish and Game office in Long Beach as well as the governor’s office, placed by people demanding that the cute, furry creatures be “rescued.” Finally, the department gave in and sent a wildlife team, which trapped them.

Also, construction continued or began in 1991 on many other long-awaited freeway projects, such as the widening of the Santa Ana Freeway and an upgrade of the infamous Orange Crush interchange of the Santa Ana, Garden Grove and Orange freeways.

The county’s proposed toll roads, however, ran into a spate of trouble this year. The 15-mile San Joaquin Hills tollway was approved by the county but has been challenged in court by environmentalists. A proposed South County tollway, the Foothill, also faces environmental obstacles.

The year witnessed intensive efforts to build a private toll lane in the center of the Riverside Freeway, California 91. The private firm pushing the project promised “91 in ‘91,” but it now looks as if bureaucratic delays will push the construction start into spring of 1992 at the earliest.

Mass-transit issues were also slow-go in 1991. In October, a deal for a 250-m.p.h., magnetically levitated train between Anaheim and Las Vegas collapsed when Bechtel Corp. backed out due to recession-caused pressures.

During the year, the county lost a few celebrities, from a U.S. President’s son to a longtime judge. Deaths included those of James Roosevelt, a well-known politician in his own right and the last surviving child of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Ross W. Cortese, the developer of Leisure World; Leo Fender, the electric-guitar pioneer; Stuart Karl, the onetime boy wonder of video whose empire dissolved in political scandal, and Calvin P. Schmidt, a Municipal Court judge who was rebuked by the judicial commission for his political contributions and favoritism. Cpl. Stephen E. Bentzlin, 23, a rifleman from Camp Pendleton who had a premonition that he would never return, was the first Orange County Marine to die in the Persian Gulf War.

Soon after troops from El Toro Marine Corps Air Station were sent off to war, the Marine base was rocked by a scandal on its own turf that ultimately cost a commanding general his job.

The issue broke in January when Col. James E. Sabow, 51, an assistant chief of staff at El Toro, killed himself with a shotgun in his back yard, military officials said. He and the chief of staff--Col. Joseph E. Underwood--had both been suspended from their posts amid allegations that they had used base planes for golf jaunts and other personal trips.

But allegations later surfaced that the man who suspended them--Brig. Gen. Wayne T. Adams, who headed the Marine air bases in California and Arizona--had used planes himself to finalize his divorce, take a vacation with his fiancee and go on other non-military trips.

After a Marine Corps investigation, Adams lost his command, was transferred and became the first general in a dozen years to be reprimanded for improper conduct.

It also was a year of punishment for a few other people.

One long drama climaxed when Charles H. Keating Jr., the renowned “bad boy” of the savings and loan disaster and ex-chief of the failed Lincoln Savings & Loan in Irvine, was convicted on state charges that he masterminded a huge fraud scheme.

Then, eight days later, on Dec. 12, Keating surrendered to be booked on 77 federal counts of conspiracy, racketeering and fraud charges alleging that he used the Irvine business to make millions for himself while defrauding his investors. The federal government added a civil suit too, for good measure.

Keating’s possible punishment? Millions in fines and up to 510 years in prison.

In another longstanding case, the elusive Daniel James Fowlie, the alleged patriarch of a national marijuana smuggling ring run out of his remote Orange County ranch, was brought to justice after a federal and local investigation that lasted 20 years. In April, Fowlie was found guilty of 15 drug charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison and a $1-million fine.

Perhaps, though, the most ironic punishment was the county’s seizure and sale of Fowlie’s 213-acre ranch, the center of his reputed drug empire. The new owner: The Girl Scouts.

As they say, back to the basics.

Times staff writers Lanie Jones, Jim Newton, Jeffrey A. Perlman, Lily Eng, Dave Lesher, Dan Weikel, Kevin Johnson, Eric Lichtblau and Eric Bailey contributed to this report.