These Girls Do Not Play Games Choosing Athletic Activities

A different kind of feminism is alive and well in Lake View Terrace where a group of 22 young women have a collective mind of their own. When offered the opportunity to participate in co-ed basketball at the recreation center, they slam-dunked that idea faster than a speeding Laker.

These young women didn’t want to clomp up and down the court getting hot and sweaty. The wanted to dance. They wanted to lead cheers.

But don’t get the wrong idea. According to program coordinator Sandy Sayers, they are righteous athletes. “There’s a lot of athleticism out there and many of the girls play volleyball, soccer and other sports,” she says.

Sayers talked over the situation with her boss, Gary Bond, last summer, and they decided to give the girls something to cheer about. They organized a cheerleading club to match, in age, the basketball players, with one group ages 6 to 8, another ages 9 to 10, and a third ages 11 to 13.

To lead the three groups they found a willing teacher in 15-year-old Granada Hills High School student Kiki Jacobs. Practice started in the fall.

The girls first cheered for an audience Jan. 15 and will continue every Saturday through the spring at the Lake View Terrace Recreation Center.

“I work once a week with each of the three groups and all day Saturday when they are cheering for the basketball teams,” says Jacobs, who admits that she feels like the second mother of 22 girls.

“The little ones don’t have a long attention span, but they are fun to work with because they love what they are doing.”

Jacobs says, “I learned cheerleading as a member of the Golden Bears cheerleading club that used to meet in Sylmar, and I also get some routines from the cheerleaders at Granada Hills.”

Jacobs says that in addition to teaching routines and trying to keep everyone’s attention, she bakes cupcakes for her young charges and is planning a sleep-over.

Just Thought We’d Check What Condition Their Condition Is In

Disasters can make you want to reach out and touch everybody. The Valley Chronicle decided to check up on how some of the people who have been in the column fared when the shake, rattle and rolling went down.

Chris Bundy in Palmdale admits to extreme anxiety over the quake because her husband, Doug, was home from the hospital on a weekend leave. She says all she could think of was “he lived through a shooting that almost killed him. Please don’t let him die now.”

Doug Bundy had fought for his life after being shot while working in a manhole for the phone company. His assailant has not been arrested.

At first, Bundy was not expected to live. Within days he was up and walking. His speech and coordination returned, but he’s suffered some memory loss and sight in his left eye.

After nine surgeries, he still faces at least three more. But he’s doing fine, says wife Chris, who says the list of people and organizations who have helped the family continues to grow.

Joe Furie, the Tarzana beauty salon owner who gave a party in November for 300 of his present and former employees, sat in his shop at 6 o’clock the morning of the quake and cried at the sight around him.

At the Michael Joseph Furie salon at the corner of Wilbur Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, he says “the windows were blown out, the stations were pulled out of the walls, and all our supplies were under about two feet of water.”

Not a pretty sight.

He had started the day calming his wife and going to help his cousin. “He lives at the corner of Woodman and Ventura. His apartment building had collapsed and he couldn’t get out,” Furie says.

After extracting his cousin, and taking him to the hospital, he went to the shop. His despair didn’t last long. “I have 15 employees who depend upon me,” says Furie, who adds that within 15 minutes the troops started showing up to help with the cleanup.

“Everyone in our center helped everyone else,” he says.

At the Teri and Gene Pira home in Northridge an exterior wall fell and killed the family’s German shepherd, “but the rest of us are OK,” says Teri Pira.

Her daughter, Lena, had recently lost, and then found, her pet iguana, Iggy.

The family youngsters, two iguanas, bird and other dog are all doing just fine.

Out at the Montie Montana ranch in Agua Dulce everything is fine, but Montana’s wife, Marilee, says the horses were somewhat unnerved.

“They all came flying out of their barn into the pens attached to their individual stalls and stood looking at each other trying to figure out who was kicking up all the fuss,” she says.

Barbara Sykes and Dave Golonski had recently adopted a Russian toddler. The couple, including their two children and 3-year-old John Vasily, are doing well.

“When the quake hit all we could hear was glass breaking around us. We got the kids and headed outside until it was light and we could see what was going on,” she says.

John Vasily, who slept through the quake until his mother came to get him, is learning English at breakneck speed, but then, that’s the way he does everything, according to his mother.

“To keep him out of harm’s way after the quake, we put him in a car with a lot of other neighborhood children. He thought it was great fun. The kids all had a ball,” Sykes says.

Leonard and Bracha Loren of Woodland Hills knew their son, Yoeli Barag, would be anxious about them. Barag had been serving as a congressional page in Washington, D. C.

He finally found out that his folks were safe from some friends in Israel who had somehow gotten through to the Lorens when the phones seemed to be down and nobody else could.

Bracha, who works at the Encino office where her husband conducts his psychiatric practice, says it’s been a busy couple of weeks.

“I tried to reassure people, and make them laugh, by telling them not to worry about the Big One coming until the seismologists at Cal Tech leave town,” Bracha says.

She says that in spite of all the things that fell down and out at her home she still finds things to laugh at, including the transformation of jelly glasses to pricey crystal.

“I’m fascinated by how many people who had glass break were harboring 24-piece sets of Waterford and Lalique,” she says.

Over at the Fallbrook Retirement Center in Canoga Park, 88-year-old Connie Feldman can’t be bothered talking about earthquakes.

She’s too busy wondering where her fame has gone.

Feldman was selected in October to be in a Little Caesars television commercial. But since that aired, her phone hasn’t rang.

“I thought after I did that commercial, others would follow,” says Feldman. “If anyone knows about a good agent, tell him to call me,” she adds.

Overheard

“I don’t have any trouble anymore getting Sean to wear his bicycle helmet. In fact, since the earthquake he wears it everywhere, including to bed.” Mother talking about her 9-year-old to friend near Serrania Park in Woodland Hills