Girl’s Gymnastics Lessons Proved a Golden Opportunity

The year was 1984 and gold medal Olympian Mary Lou Retton was America’s darling.

She leaped and bounced and sprang her way into the country’s collective consciousness like a mighty smiley face.

Little girls all over were bugging their mothers to let them take gymnastics lessons so they could become the next Mary Lou Retton.

Sharon Johnson of Woodland Hills was one of those moms.

She listened to the pleas of her daughter, Kristine, then 15, who had never been athletic and had to wear glasses.

Her mother hoped the idea would just go away.

When it didn’t, Sharon Johnson sighed, then talked it over with her husband, Russ, a Los Angeles County Department of Health official.

She told Kristine she would look into it.

Eleven years later, Kristine is the holder of many gold medals and other mementos of her accomplishments in the Special Olympics.

Kristine was born 26 years ago with Down’s syndrome. Her parents took the news of her condition with an understandable lack of understanding. Then, they set out to pave the way for a life in which Kristine could become all that she could be.

At first, Kristine was coached by the young woman who led the exercise class in which Kristine was already enrolled. Pam Noonan, who had studied gymnastics, offered to teach Kristine some basic moves.

Months of handstands, back bends and cartwheels later, Kristine participated in her first local Special Olympics contest.

By 1986, Kristine was participating in the statewide games at UCLA, where she won three gold medals.

She then went on to the international competition, held that year in South Bend, Ind., where she won two gold medals and one bronze. Her parents, younger brother, Kevin, and other family members were there to cheer her on.

The road to those victories has not been an easy one, according to Sharon Johnson. “After Krissie participated in the Tri-Valley area Special Olympics in 1984, Pam and I realized that she really had the desire and drive to go on.”

“We looked for a gym where Krissie could work out on the uneven bars, balance beam as well as a regulation-sized floor mat,” Johnson says. “Before that she had been working out on a small exercise mat.”

She says she called around the Valley inquiring of gym operators if Krissie and some of the other Special Olympic athletes could practice at their facility. “No one wanted them. There were a number of reasons, but the bottom line was, ‘Sorry, not here.’ ”

Finally, Johnson called Le Club Gymnastics in Northridge and spoke to owner Charlene Bottner. Bottner said she would welcome the young people at her place. The Special Olympic athletes still practice there.

Sharon Johnson has become the facility’s office manager and part-time coach of the Special Olympic athletes. The job was thrust upon her when Pam married and started having children, she says.

Because Kristine, a recent graduate of the Canoga Park High School special education program, competes at a higher level than the others, she works with Paul Holman, her new coach.

Johnson says the athletes are looking forward to competing in the upcoming Tri-Valley Special Olympics on April 29 at Glendale High School. Because Glendale does not have the necessary equipment, the gymnastics portion of the event will be held June 4 at Le Club Gymnastics.

Johnson says the public is welcome to attend any of the events. There is no admission charge. Athletes from the San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys, as well as the Glendale-Burbank area, will be showing off their stuff.

Former Menendez Juror Troubled by Simpson Drama

When Ruth Slike of North Hollywood got home from choir practice last Wednesday evening, her phone message button was blinking madly.

It seemed everyone she knew wanted to know her opinion of what Jeanette Harris, the excused Simpson juror, had said in The Interview.

“I didn’t know anything about it, but I certainly got caught up fast,” says Slike, whose friends had wanted her opinion partially because Slike had served on the Lyle Menendez jury.

She endured almost six months of testimony and five weeks of deliberation only to have the jury hopelessly hung.

Slike was one of the three jurors who first voted for a first-degree murder verdict. She says that, in an effort to reach a compromise, she changed her decision to murder in the second degree--to no avail.

“One thing I learned serving on the jury is that jurors all see and hear things differently,” says Slike. “What seemed obvious to me when I was listening to testimony was often interpreted differently by others. It could be frustrating.”

Slike, 63, says what concerns her most about what she has learned about The Interview is that Harris said jurors have talked among themselves about the case and that there seems to be a racial division.

“A double murder has been committed and a man is on trial for his life,” she says. “How could these people not take the judge’s admonitions seriously? Every time they leave the courtroom he tells them not to talk among themselves.”

Slike says the situation makes her believe what others have said: that many jurors go into a trial with their minds already made up.

From her Menendez experience, she says she has come to a couple of other conclusions:

“I think they should ban those people who help select juries, and I think they should ban many so-called expert witnesses.”

Slike says jury-selecting experts only pick the jurors favorable to their side, in effect stacking the jury. “How is that helpful in seeking justice?”

She is equally skeptical of expert witnesses. “Some people on our jury tended to give a lot of credence to these witnesses, but I had to question their motives. Would they have been hired to give their testimony if it didn’t favor the side that had hired them?”

Slike says since being a Menendez juror she has been an occasional follower of the Simpson murder trial. “Before serving on the jury, I almost never watched television. Now I turn on the trial every once in a while.”

She admits to being concerned by what she is seeing and hearing. “Sometimes, I question if anyone can get a fair trial the way things are today.”

Overheard:

“I don’t go to work out anymore. I eat everything I want to, and drink like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve decided that as long as the health experts keep telling us the only safe things to eat are wheat germ and spinach I will probably not live long, but I’ll go with a smile on my face.”

Man dining at Johnny Rockets restaurant in Woodland Hills to waitress.