Lunch--and Other Necessities--at a Senior Citizens Center

Ethel May takes out her job frustrations digging in the vegetable garden of her home in Lake View Terrace.

The 60-something administrator of the Pacoima Senior Citizens Center says knowing what could be done for seniors that isn’t being done sometimes gets her down.

“It seems to me that government should generously fund places like senior citizens’ centers because they are helping to hold the line against malnutrition, anxiety, depression and physical deterioration in the elderly. Isn’t that better than interceding later, when the folks need physical and psychiatric help?” May asks.

She thinks that if the senior center programs were to be expanded, it probably would be a beneficial form of preventive medicine. At the least, it would help people stay mentally and physically healthier and not give up, she says.

She points out that the lunch provided five days a week at the center is designed to give each recipient a third of his or her recommended daily nutritional requirements. But, she says, for about half of the people, it is the only food they get.

She points out that the program offers recreational sports, health testing and lectures, some cultural programs and the lunch program that sometimes feeds as many as 100 people a day.

There are other free programs, including one that offers sightseeing, such as the May 25 bus trip to Ports o’ Call in San Pedro.

But one of the most important offerings of the center is the opportunity to make new friendships, says the director.

She says many of the people who come to the center have outlived friends and have no family, which makes them lonely and frightened. “We try here to give them a sense of family and a sense that someone cares about their welfare here,” May said.

And the Children Shall Lead Them

June 5 is National Zoo Day, and the L. A. Zoo is celebrating with its fourth annual Kids Care About Conservation extravaganza.

Actually, conservation will be the theme on each Saturday of the month.

Many conservation groups will be on hand to show the little people, and their parents, how to be better stewards of the planet.

One possible favorite group is the Tree Musketeers.

Other groups include Heal the Bay, Kidspace Museum, the Nature Conservancy, the Verdugo Council of Boy Scouts, the L. A. County Department, Forestry Division, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

All will bring interactive displays.

The Orangutan Foundation International will hold an orangutan and rain forest art contest. The Sierra Club of Burbank will offer visitors Mystery Boxes.

“We particularly want young people to come out during June, because of the conservation theme,” says Lora LaMarca.

“The world is going to be in their hands soon,” the zoo’s director of education adds.

Guess What’s Up, Doc!

Eighty-five is a bit long in the tooth for someone still to be messing around with his imaginary playmates.

But, Virgil Ross’ playmates have names like Bugs Bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird and Yosemite Sam.

Ross, who lives in Studio City, is one of the creative forces that for years breathed life and personality into some of the world’s most memorable cartoon characters.

Now he’s creating a limited edition work for Warner Bros. Studio Stores, entitled, “Whoaaa!” The work depicts Bugs Bunny on horseback attempting to find the brakes on the equine beast.

There will also be a limited number of his pencil drawings of Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Tweety, Yosemite Sam and Speedy Gonzales for sale.

Ross swears he’s retired, but he keeps his sketching pencils sharp.

Ross spent more than 40 years in cartooning, 30 at Warner Bros. He says, like every other animator, he applied at Disney first.

Disney didn’t hire him, but Winkler Studios, which did Krazy Kat cartoons, did in 1930.

After that, he went to work for Walter Lantz and did Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald was the cartoon grandfather of a rabbit rascal named Bugs.

Ross then worked for Warner Bros. from 1935 to 1965.

And, while Ross admits Disney was always the industry standard, he says that might have been because of the workload.

“At Warner, we did about seven times the number of frames per week they were asked to do at Disney,” the animator says.

Ross later went to Filmation Studios and Hanna-Barbera, where he says he worked on such projects as the Pink Panther, Superman, the Archies, the Flintstones, the Jetsons, Fat Albert and the Smurfs cartoons.

Semi-retired for about five years, he is enjoying life with his wife of 53 years, Frances.

When asked which of the current crop of cartoon series he likes best, he replies: “None of them.”

When asked how he spends his time, he replies: “Doing anything I want.”

Rolling Over the Competition

One of the issues discussed by the Film Committee of the Santa Clarita Valley Chamber of Commerce was fairness.

It concerned the second annual competition for student filmmakers sponsored by the organization recently.

The question was: How could they pit children in junior high against youngsters who are almost 18 years old and in high school?

As it happens, they need not have worried.

The $250 prize for best film went to 13-year-olds Rich Thomas and Josh Berke, eighth-graders at Sierra Vista Junior High in Canyon Country.

The youngsters went undercover, with their dads, on Skid Row, to shoot what was called by the judges an “excellent, thoughtful film about drugs and drug addiction.”

It’s called “Drug Abuse.”

Overheard

“Well, of course I’m sorry that my ex-husband died recently. But it certainly will simplify the situation about visitation rights.”

--Woman to clerk in the Thrifty drugstore in Westlake Village