Homeless Bound : Simon & Garfunkel Will Reunite to Aid L.A. Children

Paul Simon will reunite in concert with Art Garfunkel for the first time in a decade on March 1 for a benefit performance at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to raise nearly $1 million for health-care services for homeless children in Los Angeles.

“Everybody agrees that little innocent kids should not have to suffer,” said Simon, whose New York-based Children’s Health Project already delivers medical services daily in a fleet of roving medical vans to about 8% of the nation’s estimated 500,000 homeless children.

“At first, when I looked (in the mid-’80s) at how terrible the problem was, it seemed overwhelming. I thought, ‘Well, why doesn’t the government fix it, or the corporations or somebody else?’ But you have to start somewhere and our program has proven you can make a difference.”

Tickets for the acoustic show--which will also feature performances by singer Neil Young and comedian Steve Martin--go on sale Sunday. Tickets will range from $100 to $1,000 in the 3,197-capacity hall; the proceeds will launch a Los Angeles chapter of Simon’s foundation.

The organization, the Children’s Health Project of Los Angeles, will be a joint effort with the Watts Health Foundation and the Charles Drew University School of Medicine and Science. It is expected to be in operation by June 1 and will eventually provide services to more than 5,000 youngsters a year in shelters in the inner city.

Nationally, Simon’s organization already treats about 40,000 poor and indigent children a year in six states plus the District of Columbia.

In a phone interview from his home in New York, Simon said he launched the project because he was disillusioned with the direction the country was heading.

“During the Reagan and Bush years, the country seemed to completely lose touch with the concept of idealism. Like the word liberal , people just made fun of it,” said the 51-year-old artist.

“We were seeing Third World poverty right in the midst of extraordinary wealth,” he continued, “but for the longest time, nobody was measuring the damage to the nation. It wasn’t like people were unaware of it. You couldn’t miss it. There they were . . . homeless people . . . living right in front of us on the street. But nobody did anything.”

In 1987, Simon linked up with Dr. Irwin Redlener, a physician who had worked for decades with indigent child populations in rural areas of Arkansas. They came up with a plan to create a roving team of doctors and nurses that would deliver health care in high-tech vans to homeless shelters in New York.

To get the project rolling, Simon donated $100,000 to buy the first van and raised another $400,000 from other corporate and public sources to underwrite staff salaries. The New York chapter now services almost 15,000 children a year with three vans--the largest program for homeless children in the country.

“The situation is so bad that inner cities like South-Central Los Angeles and New York and Detroit have immunization rates for children that are in some cases worse than places like Botswana and Iran,” Redlener said.

Clyde Oden, president and chief executive officer of the Watts Health Foundation, said the Los Angeles Children’s Project will provide pediatric services and health advocacy education to children from homeless, low-income and uninsured families at risk for communicable diseases.

“We are determined to reach out to poor children who in the last decade have fallen through the safety net of social services,” said Oden, whose group for 25 years has worked with social agencies, family shelters, churches and community groups to help impoverished families. “We intend to reach out to them in English and Spanish and Korean and whatever other language it takes to heal the community.”

Before breaking up in 1970 over personal and professional differences, the team of Simon & Garfunkel was one of the most successful duos in pop history. The pair, who met in high school, combined gentle, folk-rock sounds with Simon’s eloquent lyrics on 15 Top 40 hits, including “The Sound of Silence” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

Simon & Garfunkel reunited in 1981 for a hugely successful concert in New York’s Central Park and a subsequent U.S. tour in 1983 that included one night at Dodger Stadium. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Simon, who is currently writing a Broadway musical, said he has no plans to tour or record with Garfunkel, but is not opposed to reuniting upon occasion with his former partner to raise funds for his and other charities.

“One thing this experience has taught me is that problems can be solved and wounds can be healed,” he said. “We realize that nothing is permanent, that fresh wounds will occur, but we can’t just sit back and watch our society . . . our nation, turn into ‘Clockwork Orange.’ ”