San Fernando Valley : They’ll Get Together Again Just for Old Time’s Sake

It was a common enough query--whatever happened to that lady who once lived down the block?

For Pacoima residents, however, such questions were too important to let go unanswered. So they slowly began to track down their current and former neighbors.

They knocked on doors. They called their friends. After months of work, they had collected 500 addresses and decided to invite as many current and former neighbors to get together as possible.

The result is the Pacoima Oldtimers Reunion, which is scheduled Sunday night at the Odyssey Restaurant in Granada Hills.

About 300 people are expected to participate in the gathering, which will be the fifth such reunion since 1985. At past reunions, visitors have come from as far away as Arizona, New Mexico, New Hampshire and Mexico to attend.

“They want to meet their old friends,” said Lupe Ramirez, a Pacoima native who has helped organize the reunions since 1985. “Very few people who were born and raised in Pacoima now live there.”

Despite the overwhelming response to the first gathering, which drew 450 people, organizers never planned to make the reunion a semi-regular event. Visitors have simply had too good a time to let it go away.

“The first year it was the older people,” Ramirez said. “Now we’re getting the younger generation. It’s their nieces and nephews and sons and daughters.”