Riots Shape Birthday Celebration for Beverly Hills Businesswoman

Shirley Jaffe lives in Beverly Hills, drives a Jaguar and owns a clothing manufacturing business. When her birthday rolls around, she typically invites her closest friends to a posh Westside restaurant or heads to an exotic island with her husband.

Not on Saturday. Jaffe celebrated her 50th birthday near the corner of 91st Street and Western Avenue in South Los Angeles.

At least half of her 125 or so guests were poor and middle-class African-Americans, many of whom had never met someone from Beverly Hills. The others were mostly well-to-do Anglo Westsiders, many equally ignorant of their neighbors to the south.

“My husband asked me what I wanted for my birthday,” said Jaffe, her face painted as a clown, “and I said I didn’t want a big party this year, that I wanted to do something to help. This feels better than any piece of jewelry around my neck.”

The gathering was held at the Al Wooten Jr. Heritage Center, home to a small after-school learning program tucked behind a wall of security bars a short walk from riot-torn Manchester Boulevard. The storefront operation was founded three years ago by Wooten’s mother, Myrtle Faye Rumph, after Wooten was killed in a drive-by shooting.

The center has been struggling since the beginning, operating on a shoestring budget and depending almost entirely on volunteer help and an abundance of optimism to keep it afloat. Rumph was heartbroken by her son’s murder, but she turned aside calls for revenge from angry relatives, opting instead to sell her house, pay off her debts and devote herself to keeping young African-Americans out of trouble.

“I am not doing this for my son. There is nothing I can do for him now,” said Rumph, whose son was 35 when he died. “I am doing it because of what happened to him. I would like for it not to keep happening to other mothers, sisters and brothers. The pain is unbearable. It hurts you so bad you don’t want anybody to feel that way.”

That Rumph, 61, and Jaffe would ever meet, they say, is a testament to the good that has emerged from the destruction of the riots. Jaffe read about the center in a newspaper story several weeks after the uprising, and like many others, offered to help.

Peggy Gottlieb, also of Beverly Hills, donated $10,000 so that the cramped center could expand into the storefront next door, which for years had housed the Rumph family’s storage and moving business. Next week, 25 children from the center will spend four days in San Luis Obispo, courtesy of John Koger, an African-American businessman there.

On Saturday, Jaffe donated a seven-seat van to the center for field trips, and dozens of her friends, following Jaffe’s request, contributed thousands of dollars instead of buying her gifts. The soft-spoken Rumph, her fist stuffed with checks, and several volunteers could barely control their excitement in the graffiti-strewn alley behind the center, where Jaffe had set up tables and chairs and hired a disc jockey to play rap and other music.

“We’ve gotten more assistance in the last three months than in the previous 2 1/2 years,” said Rick Holland, Wooten’s cousin, who was among those calling for retaliation after the drive-by shooting. “It shows the proper decision was made. We wouldn’t be here right now if we had taken the violent route.”

Jaffe hired several security guards and provided valet parking, but some friends were still too afraid to come. Her videotaped invitation included clips from a television interview with Rumph and a suggestion by Jaffe that her guests drive the entire length of Western Avenue to see the devastation from the riots.

For many of Jaffe’s Westside guests, it was their first journey into South Los Angeles in years. They talked of the burned-out businesses, how horrifying it was to see the destruction, and how moving it was to meet Rumph and the dozens of children she tutors. Rumph never finished school, dropping out in the 9th grade because her family could not afford bus fare to a segregated black high school near her Texas home.

For some of the local residents at the party, the gathering was also an eye-opener. Some at first had reservations when they heard that a wealthy woman from Beverly Hills wanted to hold a party at their center.

“It brought up all of the prejudice that blacks have of whites, especially whites with money,” said Naomi Bradley, who volunteers at the center. “Your first thought is that they are coming to ‘save’ us.”

But it did not take long, Bradley said, before Jaffe was welcomed with open arms, and the residents saw her interest in the center as an opportunity to build bridges between people and neighborhoods that have long been estranged. At the end of Saturday’s party, Devlan Boyd, 15, presented Jaffe with a plaque bearing the inscription: “The ties that bind us will never break.”

Before she left, Jaffe took a moment to tend to a pot of flowers she had planted several weeks ago near the center’s front door. The purple-and-white impatiens, hardly visible in the shadow of the floor-to-ceiling security fence, were still blooming.