Her Love of Lennox Spans Cultural Diversity : Ethnicity: Being Anglo in an overwhelmingly Latino area makes Mary Davis stand out. Now her community is preparing to honor her--again.

Instead of preparing for the Lennox Cinco de Mayo parade last spring, Mary Davis watched from her front yard as youths looted a liquor store and gasoline station on a street corner a stone’s throw from her home.

The parade, canceled last year because of the civil unrest, will return this spring. And Davis will serve as grand marshal, an honor first bestowed on her by a Lennox residents’ group last year.

Davis happens to be an Anglo in an overwhelmingly Latino community. The bond she has forged with her neighbors is as much a study in cultural understanding as it is an example of stubbornness. She refuses to be part of an exodus of longtime residents that has included so many of her friends through the years. Packing up and leaving, she said, is not a good answer to the pressing social problems that plague the area.

“I love the people here. I love my community,” said Davis, 64, who has lived in Lennox with her husband for 30 years. “I have no reason to leave.”

Most of her Anglo neighbors of the early 1960s have fled Lennox in numbers matched only by the influx of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Latinos now make up 86% of the Lennox population of almost 23,000, helping to make the area one of the most densely populated communities in the South Bay.

Longtime residents and newcomers alike often say they feel like prisoners in their own homes because of the unincorporated community’s serious gang and drug problems. But Davis, a Lennox School District trustee, has thrived in this working-class community, becoming one of its biggest boosters. She works in the snack bar at Hawthorne High School football games, congratulates student award winners at ceremonies and chats with parents at school open house nights.

“I think my purpose in life is showing that maybe this can be a better community,” Davis said. “That’s why I keep fighting here and working for the kids, especially. I’m happy here.”

Such commitment is what prompted the Lennox Coordinating Council, a residents’ group, to unanimously select Davis as the parade grand marshal, said Maria Verduzco, the organization’s president.

“She represents someone who doesn’t give up on the community,” Verduzco said. “She’s lived here when it was altogether a different community. Instead of running away from (the changes), she stuck to it.

“To her, it makes no difference what the race is of who she helps. Why should it make a difference to us what race she is when we select a grand marshal?”

Besides the parade, the Cinco de Mayo festivities will include a carnival at Lennox Park. The event, scheduled for May 1, serves as a fund-raiser for the Lennox Coordinating Council. Proceeds will help pay for activities in the Lennox School District.

The impact of immigration is vividly demonstrated by the changing makeup of the school district, which consists of a middle school and five elementary schools. In 1968, Anglos accounted for 81% of the district’s students. By 1975, Anglo students accounted for 40%. In 1985, the percentage of Anglo students had dwindled to 3%.

By contrast, Latino students, who in 1968 made up 16% of the students enrolled, had increased to 85% by 1985. This year, Latinos account for 94% of the district’s 5,700 students.

Officials say Davis is given to impromptu inspections of school campuses and she prods the district into quickly correcting any maintenance problems she discovers, such as dirty bathrooms.

She also has routinely donned old clothes, taken up a brush and painted over graffiti in sections of the community with other Lennox residents. She has helped lead efforts to sweep up trash and clean blighted neighborhoods. And, in the last two years, she has helped organize petition drives asking the county Sheriff’s Department for more deputies to patrol the area and to continue funding for a popular bicycle patrol.

Lennox sheriff’s officials say the efforts have worked: The bike patrols have been left relatively unscathed by budget cuts, and the Sheriff’s Department is developing plans to boost the number of deputies assigned to the area.

Davis attributes many of the problems in Lennox to absentee landlords. About 70% of the 4,998 occupied housing units in Lennox are owned by absentee landlords, according to 1990 Census statistics.

Davis said many landlords are loath to repair or maintain their properties, and their renters “are a lot of times undocumented people who are afraid to complain. Then you have other (renters) who sneak in more people than they are supposed to and nobody does anything because the landlords live far away.”

Seated in her living room last week, Davis talked about her life and her community.

“Me, I love all people,” said Davis, who has two children, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild. “My philosophy is, you treat people the way you want to be treated.”

Davis moved with her husband from Illinois to Inglewood in 1960, settling in Lennox three years later. Like all Lennox residences, her home lies under the flight path of Los Angeles International Airport. A siren wailed in the background.

“That’s on Century Boulevard,” said Virgil (Benny) Davis, her husband. “You get used to that, like the sound of the airplanes.”

Said Mary Davis, half-joking: “You almost get used to the gunshots.”

Although the home has a wrought-iron screen door, Mary Davis refuses to have bars installed on the windows. “I don’t want to be a prisoner anywhere,” she said. “If somebody really wants in, they’re going to get in whether you have them (bars) or not.”

An avid bowler, Davis said she was knocking down pins at the South Bay Bowl in Redondo Beach when the riots broke out last year. Her friends were worried about her safety.

“A lot of people said, ‘Mary, let us take you to our home.’ I said, ‘No, no. Once I get in Lennox I’ll be OK ‘cause everybody knows me.’ I’m not afraid here. It’s my home.”