Child’s Play : Diversity: For the kids, a picnic for pen pals at two cross-city schools was all fun and games. But the parents shared a few awkward moments.

South Central and the Westside picnicked together last Saturday at Kenneth Hahn Park.

Gloria Liggett’s third-graders from 97th Street Elementary School at Century and Figueroa shared the event with their pen pals, 6- and 7-year-olds from a non-graded elementary class at P.S. No. 1, a private school in Santa Monica.

The picnic culminated a year’s project, during which the kids have exchanged letters and drawings and have taken two joint field trips. Their families met for the first time at the Southwest-L. A. park.

The kids had a great time. And while the adults were cordial and many said they thought the picnic was a good idea, the event was a learning experience for everyone and not without its awkward moments.

Liggett wanted her students, mostly black and Latino, to have a pen-pal project with children in another part of the city, kids they could meet. She found her match with the P.S. No. 1 class that is team-taught by Mimi Ward and Brandi Miller.

Ward said she felt a responsibility as an educator to expose her Anglo students to more diversity: “This is education. L.A. is the most multicultural city in the country.”

And so the children exchanged letters throughout the year and went to the beach together in March. When the riots occurred, the teachers said, children from both classes were deeply concerned about each other, writing “Are you OK?” letters, asking questions.

In May, they took a second field trip to the Science Museum. The teachers compared it to a reunion of long-lost friends.

The picnic was a little more complicated.

It got off on the wrong foot and soon became a learning experience about economic contrasts for some Westside parents.

Well-intended flyers went home with the kids from both schools, urging families to come, to bring food for the family and “something to share.”

Few responded from 97th Street Elementary. Picnic planners gradually learned, Ward says, that some families had no food to share. And no transportation.

Teachers and parents from P.S. No. 1 provided much of the food and offered rides.

Then came the last-minute problems: Phone calls to get directions sometimes met with disconnected service.

Mark Krenzien and his son, Evan, arrived late at the park and without the little girl from 97th Street Elementary they were supposed to pick up. When they arrived at her home, they told the teachers, they learned she was a foster child. The girl had not told her foster mother about the picnic, and because proper paperwork had not been done and the foster parent had other children to care for, the child could not go.

There had been one mix-up with rides. Dottie Turner, fearing that she had been forgotten, asked her neighbor, Joe Christopher, for a ride at the last minute. She did not want to disappoint her grandson, Tobias.

“It’s hard to organize,” Liggett said. “Things just happen.”

Christopher didn’t know what he was getting into, but he was a sport, getting a kick out of helping with the games.

In the end, plenty of family members but comparatively few parents from 97th Street Elementary came.

Explained Liggett: “Saturday’s a work day for many of our people.”

Some exchanges between adults resembled those at teen mixers--a little awkward, with moments of enthusiasm and familiarity. Those sometimes were met with polite reserve or tolerant affability.

People made efforts to share blankets with strangers and, if nothing else came to mind--as it sometimes did not--they talked about the plentiful chicken from the Colonel, homemade salads and desserts. Or commented about the kids as they watched them jump rope and get into the thorny shrubs at the fringe of the park. Or praised the pen-pal program.

At times there was unconscious insensitivity, when one’s best foot forward wound up in one’s mouth. One Westside mother told a 97th Street mother how important she thought such exchanges were, then went on to say all schools should “adopt” an inner-city school.

“Mmmmmhmmmm,” the other mother politely agreed, turning her attention elsewhere.

But it was, after all, a day for the kids. Their enthusiasm and spontaneity--during sack races, three-legged races, relays and other games--was contagious.

Tiny 5-year-old Devora Kaye made up for lost time. A kindergartner, she was too young to be a pen pal like her sister, Ariel, but she quickly made a friend at the park--Charles Guidry, a tall seventh-grader from the 97th Street neighborhood there with his mother, Michelle, and younger brother, Corbin.

Charles and Devora instinctively found something enchanting in each other. Charles towered over Devora and played big brother; she, in turn, treated him like her hero. They teamed for the races, and when it came to the dress-up relay, Devora was swamped in a long evening dress, stole and floppy hat.

“Go Devora! C’mon Devora!” Guidry yelled. But all the cheering in the world would not free her feet from the dress. Finally, all Guidry could do was turn toward the blanket where his mother was sitting out the games, call “Mama” and--with a wide, fond grin--point her attention toward his partner.

At day’s end, Liggett seemed pleased: “I’ve seen a few parents making plans to get together. And the ones who came will go back and tell the others.”

Shelly Wills, father of Graham at P.S. No. 1, said he was new to such activities but was galvanized to “do something” by the riots. He joined the school’s integration committee--although that title made him roll his eyes; he said he’d like to see it renamed the cultural exchange committee.

Wills’ enthusiasm was apparent all day. He played with countless children and at picnic’s end shook hands goodby with the adults he had met. “I was so joyous to find Mimi had this program already in place,” he said, determined to see it go school-wide next year.

Alma Vasquez, who accompanied Annabel Reyes of Liggett’s class, called the picnic “beautiful” and said “it is so good to exchange with the two cultures.”

As people straggled off, Barry Kaye, father of Ariel and Devora, voiced why many found the day, for all its limitations, so important, necessary and satisfying:

“This (picnic) just makes the big city smaller.”