Rumbling Earth Doesn’t Crumble Reunion Plans

Fire brought them together, and an earthquake wasn’t going to keep them apart.

Friends of Barbara and Dave Norton, whose home was destroyed in the Oct. 27 Laguna firestorm, have vowed to hold their long-planned reunion today to help their former USC classmates, despite new hardships for some in the group from Monday’s earthquake.

“We still want to raise anyone and everyone’s spirits after these disasters,” said Susan Frisk of Seal Beach, who helped organize the party in Long Beach.

Frisk and Nancy Blair, sorority sisters of Barbara Norton at USC’s Gamma Phi Beta in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, said they started planning the reunion soon after learning of their friend’s disaster.

Frisk had seen the Nortons’ Caribbean Way address in the newspaper, listed among the more than 400 homes destroyed or damaged by the firestorm. Others had seen the Nortons on television the morning after the fire, sifting through the rubble of their home.

Word spread quickly. All wanted to help in some way. A reunion was planned.

But then came Monday’s Northridge quake, which devastated many parts of Los Angeles and complicated travel throughout the region. Nevertheless, Frisk, Blair and the 50 others expected to attend the reunion decided that it should continue.

“We all need to be together,” said Blair, who is helping to organize the party in her hometown. “Everyone needs a little calming and reassuring. I thought it would be fun to look forward to something good for a change.”

Barbara Norton said she was “blown away” that her friends, some of whom she hasn’t seen in nearly 25 years, didn’t want to cancel the reunion following the quake.

“It’s something, the way people put their own needs on the back burner during a tragedy,” she said. “You really see the best in people.”

Friends and family from points throughout Southern California, including Santa Monica, Tarzana and other locations in the earthquake zone, plan to attend the reunion. None of the friends traveling from the San Fernando Valley lost their homes in the earthquake, although some of their houses sustained damage, Frisk said.

Although the Nortons lost their address book in the fire, Blair and Frisk were able to track down many of the couple’s college classmates. Barbara Norton graduated from USC in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and public relations. Dave Norton also finished his undergraduate work at USC in 1970 and graduated in 1974 from the USC School of Dentistry.

Invitations to the party call on family and friends to “Raise Our Spirits in ‘94!” and help the Nortons get started again.

For the Nortons, who lost nearly everything in the fire, the most treasured gifts friends will bring are pictures of the couple from their college days. Blair and Frisk have also put together an address book.

The Nortons said said they can hardly wait for the party, a much-welcomed break from the demands of trying to rebuild. The couple and their two sons, ages 11 and 17, have moved three times since the fire. And each day brings new wrangling over such things as insurance coverage, banking and city building requirements.

“It makes you feel really good that all your friends are thinking of you and want to help,” Dave Norton said.