MISSION HILLS : Historical Society to Hold Benefit Concert

The San Fernando Valley Historical Society will hold a benefit concert Sunday to raise money for a new computer and copy machine to replace those stolen from the society’s headquarters last month.

The concert, featuring The Classical Blitz, a Valley-based orchestral group, is at 5 p.m. on the lawn of Andres Pico Adobe at 10940 Sepulveda Blvd. in Mission Hills. Tickets are $7 for adults at the door; no charge for children under 12.

Months of fund raising and hours of painstaking volunteer labor were lost when a thief pried the door of the San Fernando Valley Historical Society offices and made off with the computer and the copy machine over the weekend of July 4.

Society President Bobbette Fleschler said she called police after she arrived July 5 to find the door wrenched open. Gone was not only the $3,000 worth of office equipment, purchased with money raised through donations and benefits, but also detailed computer lists of several hundred historical postcards, meticulously catalogued for research by society volunteer Peggy Cecchi.

“It was a shock to my little system, I’ll tell you,” Cecchi said.

The computer had been purchased to catalogue the society’s collection and make it more accessible to researchers. Cecchi said about one-third of the 1,000 historical postcards in the collection had been entered into the computer, as well as the first batches of historical photos. The information has not been lost because the cards themselves were left untouched, but re-cataloguing them will be a big job, she said.

The society had no office insurance because it was too expensive, said Glenn Thornhill, vice president of the society. Moreover, volunteers were still learning how to copy information from the computer onto backup disks and had not done so.

Also lost were membership lists, which have been reconstructed from notes, and a manuscript for a local history book that will now have to be retyped, Fleschler said.