A CHRONICLE OF THE PASSING SCENE : A Few Words From on High

Leaders of the 66-year-old Cornerstone Christian Church in Northridge are looking to a higher authority these days to help increase their flock.

They are putting their faith in a billboard.

It’s the work of 7-year-old Ashley Nagin, whose artistic endeavor has proven to be a big draw.

The church began life in 1927 in a building in Tarzana. By the 1970s, it was surrounded by apartments whose residents used the church parking lot as their own.

“If we wanted to have room for the parishioners we had to have the cars towed away every Sunday morning,” says the Rev. Vernon Rodgers, who has been the church’s pastor for 19 years.

Towing people’s cars was not the Sunday image he was striving for.

The church moved to its current home at Parthenia Street and Winnetka Avenue in 1979 and thrived until recently. Rodgers blames the economy for the 20% dip in membership--to fewer than 200--as people lost their jobs and moved out of town.

Rodgers and the associate pastor--his son-in-law, Ronald Nagin--decided to be imaginative in bringing in new people. They rented the billboard at the northeast corner of Winnetka and Roscoe Boulevard to invite people to drop by.

“We contacted the billboard company, and they sent a representative out to show us an artistic rendition of what we might put on the sign, but it was way too churchy,” Rodgers said. “We were looking for something that would stress how family-oriented our church really is.” They then turned to Rodgers’ granddaughter (Nagin’s daughter) and her crayons.

“We asked Ashley to draw a house and some other things,” Rodgers said. “She is the billboard’s artist of record. It’s her house and her lettering. It’s her work.”

The results went sky-high in late November. “Since then,” Rodgers said, “people who have lived in the community for years but never come for services have started dropping by.”

Talk About Long-Distance Recruiting

One day this past October, Canoga Park attorney Jaak Treiman got a phone call from a retired U. S. Army colonel in San Francisco asking him to call the new president of Estonia, Lennart Meri.

Meri wanted to know if Treiman would be interested in becoming the justice chancellor (something like the chief justice) in the new government of post-Soviet Estonia.

Treiman, who has roots here, a wife earning her doctorate in education at UC Riverside, and a daughter about to graduate from Washington State University, nevertheless placed the call to Estonia.

Several weeks later, he was on a plane to meet Meri and members of the new cabinet.

“I had left Estonia with my parents on Oct. 20, 1943, when I was 3 months old. The Germans and Russians were fighting over it. I returned almost 49 years to that date.

“I had never been back before. I grew up in the Valley, in Sun Valley, attended Polytechnic High School and was on the same basketball team with Gale Goodrich.”

To the USC graduate and president of the Canoga Park Chamber of Commerce, it all seemed pretty exotic.

Treiman has been active in the American Estonian community, however, serving as Estonia’s honorary consul in California. “There aren’t a lot of Estonians in the United States, so we know each other fairly well.”

Now that Estonia is no longer under Soviet domination, the new government is trying to reach out to Estonians who have been educated in the West and understand Western ways, Treiman said.

“This seven-year appointment would be an opportunity for me to affect the way that justice is carried out in my homeland. Until now, the police and prosecutors have pretty much decided an arrested person’s fate,” he said.

In addition to his own appointment, Alex Einseln--a former Army colonel--is scheduled to become commander of the armed forces, but both positions need to be approved by the Parliament in addition to the official appointment by the president, Treiman said. If Treiman should assume the office in Estonia, he would make $150 to $300 per month. He’s not sure how he’d keep his Canoga Park law practice going--or pay the bills.

The Woman Behind Fergie’s Fleeting Figure

There was a time when the wild and crazy Sarah Ferguson had a life and a figure.

This was recently sworn to by Fergie’s once-upon-a-time exercise guru, Callan Pinckney, who is willing to take all the credit for the don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it smashing figure of Fergie during a few months in 1988.

“If she’d stuck with my program instead of slacking off once I left England, she wouldn’t look like a weightlifter today,” Pinckney sniffed.

In addition to the Duchess of York--whom Pinckney flew to London to administer to--Barbra Streisand, Marsha Mason and Ellen Burstyn have worked out at Pinckney’s salon in Manhattan.

Recently, Pinckney was in the Valley meeting with Sharon Casey, who has since opened the first Valley branch of the Manhattan firm-’em-up emporium in Studio City.

Casey, 42, had a bad back resulting from a car accident and found relief through Pinckney’s Callanetics program.

She chose the Studio City location for its proximity to the major studios.

Actors and actresses are a natural constituency, of course.

Mini-Muscovites Are Whistling ‘Dixie’

For 11 years, the relatively youthful organization Concern II has raised money to fund research on childhood cancer. The group underwrites programs at UCLA, Childrens Hospital in Los Angeles and USC.

In recent years, they have spread their funding to other countries, including Israel, Sweden and now Russia.

They also had reached out to the children of the former Soviet Union.

The group’s chairman and one of its founding members, Derek Alpert (yes, Herb is his uncle), recently found himself on the way to Moscow, joined by other officers of the group.

“We went to hospitals to see how the bone-marrow transplant program we helped set up was functioning, but we also visited a couple of schools,” he said.

Alpert went to the schools loaded with toys from Mattel and greetings from second-graders at Dixie Canyon School in Sherman Oaks, where his daughter, Jessica, is a student.

“The biggest thrill to the Russian children was a video I had taken of the children at Dixie Canyon talking about themselves and their lives to the children in Moscow,” Alpert said.

In turn, the young Muscovites loaded Alpert down with greetings--and a video of their own--to take back to the second-graders in Sherman Oaks.

Overheard

“How do those women-who-lunch rate the table where Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall usually sit? They should stay at the Bistro Garden, where they belong.”

--Universal producer to lunch guest at Il Mito in Studio City