Celebrating 21 Years of Memories and Bylines
Twenty-one years ago this Christmas morning, my first column appeared in the Los Angeles Times. I was with my daughter-in-law and her parents in Deming, N. M., and it was the first Christmas after my husband’s death. Doug died on March 25, 1971, and our in-laws had been kind enough to ask me to New Mexico to be with them.
It was the first Christmas I saw luminarias along the paths, in the Mexican fashion. And we had tamales for Christmas Eve, a Mexican tradition too.
Twenty-one years have gone by, and I have lived in the Carmel Valley, Pasadena and now La Quinta.
It has been cold down in the desert, bottoming out at 32 degrees, causing some of the snowbirds to wish they had their lease money back.
The mountains are tall and black and jagged, looking down on Peaches and me.
This is a memorable day in my life, the 21st anniversary of my first appearance in The Times. The most recent column and byline had the same glisten for me as the first one.
Besides my Times anniversary, the season brings my birthday on Christmas Eve. I began the festivities this year with a marvelous evening early in December. My friends Bill and Jean Camm live in La Quinta and are dandy people with a pair of cats that run their household. The Camms invited me to hear the Voices of Christmas.
At the Hyatt Grand Champion, we heard the magic music of the season, dined like potentates and remembered silvery nostalgia of Christmases past.
As nearly as I could count, there were 32 members of the chorus, making the room peal with holiday joy. They were marvelous, singing hymns, carols, love songs, fireside toe-toasting songs.
Betts Simon was chairman of the event for the 21st year. She pulls it all together and makes the evening merry and bright. This event always seems like the official opening of the season.
As always, Les Brown conducted the orchestra and chorus. Les Brown still moves like a young man, and his dinner jacket sits on his shoulders with the insouciance I remember from going to dance to his Band of Renown when I was in high school. He moves his hands and his arms with a rhythmic beat that takes me back to those evenings with three gardenias on my wrist.
The chorus began more than 30 years ago with a group of volunteer singers who had been caroling together, using among themselves the title “The Hymn and Hangover Club.”
When the baby son of composer-arranger Sonny Burke and his wife died, the group formed the Voices of Christmas in his memory. This year marks the 37th Voices celebration in Los Angeles and the 21st in the desert.
Their desert concert marked 21 years for me as well, since the year my husband died and also the year I had my first column on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times.