Best and Worsts / Valley Reader Write : Tributes Tell Why Valley Is Home

Couched as it was with reminders of the earthquake, the wildfires and the sagging economy, our question to readers was simple: Why do you stay in the San Fernando Valley?

In dozens of poems, essays and even a limerick, written on manual typewriters, computers or scrawled on note cards, you responded, defiantly defending your neighborhood, your strip mall, your Valley.

For some, it is the memories that keep you here: of orange groves, farmlands or the deer that once roamed the Valley floor. For others, it is as simple as the convenience of nearby malls or the endlessly sunny days. Others point to something less tangible, a collective spirit that rises in the face of each new disaster.

But we asked for your words, so we’ll let you explain. Here are some of our favorite remarks, illustrated with photographs by Brian Vander Brug about why there’s no place quite like the Valley to call home.

Everything Accessible From Granada Hills

What do I like about San Fernando Valley? Memories of arriving at my uncle’s house in 1937. Living on White Oak Street in Reseda--a dirt road. Most of the Valley was farmland and orchards. The smogless days and nights were beautiful and summer heat didn’t seem all that bad.

During the summer I worked with my uncle in his Santa Monica bakery. We drove through the Sepulveda Pass at 3 a.m. and spotted about four or five deer each morning eating alongside the highway. Van Nuys Airport was a dirt strip in 1938 and I had my first airplane ride in a two-seater. Sepulveda Boulevard was a ribbon of concrete two lanes wide and the major north-south road across the Valley. Traffic was next to nothing.

Our daughter was born in Van Nuys in a 24-bed maternity hospital. My wife and I have lived in three locations in the Valley--Van Nuys, Northridge and Granada Hills. We like Granada Hills because of all the freeways near our house. We can head for the desert, Santa Anita track, south to the ocean or west to the Ventura beaches. We’re close enough to Glendale, Pasadena and Hollywood for all the concerts and plays. CSUN is fun if you like watching excellent college girls softball or boys baseball, and the football stadium is small enough to hear the tackles. The Valley is centrally located. Kaiser hospitals are close with nice staffs, which is important when you are 72 years old. Our daughter lives and works in the Valley and our neighbors have always been the best.

As for wildfires, they can happen anywhere and the earthquakes are like sex--it seldom happens and doesn’t last for long.

HENRY J. FRITZEL

Granada Hills