Community Treasure : Shop Owner Enlists Neighbors to Keep Dream Alive After Riots

Glorianita Megget’s girlhood dream of owning her own dress shop was realized and shattered all in the space of a few days after rioting engulfed her Vernon Avenue neighborhood and looters stole thousands of dollars in merchandise.

Megget did not mourn her losses for long.

She soon was able to reopen her shop--but this time it was different. Instead of ordering from pricey New York catalogues or scouring downtown’s garment center to find the right items, she has chosen to tap the riches in her community.

Mrs. Harris down the street, it turns out, is an excellent seamstress. Linda from around the corner has been making lingerie for years. Megget’s friend Brenda Slaughter is a fine artisan whose woven baskets she has always admired.

Now all of the women have an outlet for their talents. They have turned Megget’s Place into a kind of neighborhood bazaar--and, more important, they say a new sense of goodwill has risen from the devastation.

“If the community spirit can spread, maybe people won’t be so quick to burn everything down. They’ll have something invested here,” said Hilda Harris, the seamstress who displays handmade clothing and hats in Megget’s Place.

“Before, we barely looked at each other,” said Megget, an ebullient woman with a ready smile.

She and the others believe that their collaboration is at the cutting edge of a movement to keep dollars in the African-American community, providing the means to enrich each other.

“If you look back, you see that the promises to revitalize these communities made after the Watts riots were never fulfilled,” said Slaughter. “The only way it’s going to happen is if we network like we’re doing here.”

Such community togetherness was the last thing on Megget’s mind when she discovered the wreckage of her small shop after the worst of the rioting had subsided. She had been visiting her son, who lives in South-Central Los Angeles, not far from the store, when a Ventura County jury handed down its not guilty verdicts in the trial of four police officers charged with beating Rodney G. King.

They were on his front porch discussing the outcome when she noticed a plume of smoke rising from a corner.

“Then I saw another plume coming up. And my son, who calls me ‘Dear,’ said: ‘Dear, it’s on.’ I couldn’t even get to the corner before fires were breaking out all over, so we decided it would be best to stay the night,” she said.

Megget did not reach her store for another 48 hours. “I felt raped, violated, just devastated,” she said, remembering her first glimpse of the destruction.

The store had been a labor of love, born after years of squirreling away whatever she could spare from her paychecks as a Job Corps counselor. Ten years and $10,000 later, she opened her shop--on April 20.

“I had put so much into it, had been so happy, so elated,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine how I was going to start all over again.”

For Megget, the riots provoked soul-searching about the lack of economic opportunities in the black community and how pent-up frustration and rage could reach out and hurt someone like her. She also wondered what she might do to help change conditions.

The answers, she discovered, were all around her.

“I had to talk it out, telling people all about my woe,” laughs Megget. “And then a lady came by and said she knew someone who sewed. She gave me a number and I went over and her stuff was just beautiful. And then one day a man dropped by and it turned out that he made jewelry. It’s just been by word of mouth.”

With a coat of bright purple paint gracing the storefront, Megget’s Place is not hard to spot in the middle of an otherwise rough looking block of Vernon. One recent afternoon, traffic and sidewalk gossip was briefly stopped when a team of undercover police made a drug arrest at a home across the street, as schoolchildren looked on.

It is an image of their neighborhood the women would like to change. They believe that by working together, they can help themselves and be role models for others.

“The riots woke everybody up,” said Andrea Bright, 23, who with her sister Paige, 22, and cousin Erica, 21, designs hand-painted clothes for adults and children. “We realized that we needed to do something about the bad image of South-Central and show the positive side that is here.”

Andrea Bright says Megget has provided the break that she and her cohorts have been waiting for.

“Before when we approached businesses, everyone looked at us as kids. They would not give us a chance,” she said. Now, the three women are able to display their baby clothes to the community.

Elsewhere in the shop, decorated in purple and green paisley, are homemade jewelry and lingerie, brightly colored African garb, handmade baskets and designer hats made by Harris. She also specializes in altering clothes for the disabled.

Megget is allowing Andrea, Paige and Erica, who are just starting in business, to display their garments on a consignment basis. She buys other items directly from makers for sale in the store.

“Business has picked up since the riots and I think our new arrangement has something to do with it,” she said.

Megget would like to expand a small corner of the shop devoted to art so that area youth will have a place to display their handiwork and perhaps hold shows.

“We need to keep money in our community and create more employment right here,” she said. “These are people who can’t afford their own stores, so I can create an opportunity for them here.

“Maybe what happened to me was meant for a reason. If I can put more effort into the community, then maybe it’ll work out better for us all in the long run.”