How a Park ‘Magician’ Might Vanish

A park sandbox is a haven, a palette, a place for kids and parents to laugh and dig for gold and build relationships while they construct swirling castles of fantasy.

The sandbox, grass and pavement at the Studio City Recreation Center seem especially capable of this magic. And parents point to one man as the magician.

Park Director Jon Klay is a humble man, shy in public when the subject isn’t T-ball or roller hockey, and not quick to take praise.

But he doesn’t need to talk. Parents do it for him. Many say they love him like a son or brother for the affection and programs he has lavished on their children.

Which explains why more than 200 people turned out on a recent evening to fight for his job.

Klay, it turns out, is up for a transfer to a park in Sun Valley, a tattered eastern section of the San Fernando Valley that might as well be in the next galaxy to the parents of Studio City.

The city bureaucracy has responded to the parents’ protests with all the sympathy bureaucracies are famous for.

Olga Singer, the Department of Recreation and Parks official responsible for Klay’s transfer, put it this way:

“I want to know where in any public employee’s contract it says you are guaranteed a job [in one place] for a lifetime. It doesn’t happen. We all get moved.”

Singer, who is 80, said she has worked in park management since 1937 and appreciates the heart and sweat Klay has put into the Studio City park--creating an exemplary environment for preschoolers, roller hockey players and senior citizens. The park stages half a dozen theatrical productions each year, and even hosts a popular preschool co-op in one corner.

Singer said she wanted to move Klay to Sun Valley “to spread the wealth,” and that the reassignment was “only for the good of the department, not because of an idea that popped into our head.”

Shelley Gelber and Sandy Lavet aren’t buying it. The women, both mothers of boys who pal around in a roller hockey league of Klay’s invention, rounded up hundreds of signatures on a petition the day after they learned of his scheduled transfer. Then they launched an end run around the bureaucracy by lobbying the area’s City Council member, Mike Feuer, to take up their cause.

Gelber expresses heartbreak over the prospect of losing Klay. Wary of sounding like a whiny mother only out for her own children’s interest, she still made an emotional appeal to Feuer and later appeared before the Board of Recreation and Parks commissioners.

“In Los Angeles, to be able to develop positive, long-term relationships with people is rare and precious,” she wrote in a letter. “It really makes me very sad to think that because of departmental policy we would all suffer by the loss of this very special relationship with Jon Klay.

“Jon has love and concern for these kids. He has a relationship with the families as well. My kids love him. Is there really a valid rationale to start over and try to rebuild with someone new? If your marriage is working, do you think a change is warranted every six years just to bring in some new blood?

“I’m hoping this isn’t the message my kids ultimately learn.”

Lavet focuses much of her appreciation on the safety of the environment that Klay has created. The park feels like her own backyard, she says, and she considers Klay part of her extended family. She notes that the director has a college degree in psychology as well as physical education, and that his intelligence, leadership and compassion are mirrored in his assistants.

That’s a pretty good trick, considering the clientele.

Several celebrities’ children play in the roller hockey league, as do a couple of well-known child actors--although prima donnas are not tolerated--making the sidelines a secret favorite of star watchers. Sometimes, one doesn’t have to go that far to brush shoulders with a Hollywood legend.

One parent found himself in the park men’s room with his 3-year-old son and 1-year-old daughter. His son was crying because the room was dark and cold and his daughter, perched behind him in a little red firetruck that she refused to get out of, was crying because her brother was crying.

Just at the instant of highest alarm, the door burst open and a high-pitched cackle familiar to moviegoers the world over filled the room.

“Classic! Just classic!” rasped roller hockey dad Danny DeVito, dressed in his trademark Hawaiian shirt and dark sunglasses, and obviously delighted to come upon a real-life quandary that could have been a scene in one of his crisis-a-minute movies.

“Dad’s afternoon at the park! Classic! Ha ha ha!”

Councilman Feuer’s children are too young to swing hockey sticks with the stars, but the prominent park-goer has rallied to Klay’s cause.

Observing that Los Angeles has less park acreage per capita than any other major U.S. city, the councilman said the parks department’s transfer policy is misguided if it fails to enhance neighborhoods’ sense of community.

“We’re trying to instill in residents of this city a feeling that they have control over the course of their lives,” he said. “We ought to encourage these parents who are doing things to accentuate their common bond.”

Feuer asked parks department chief Jackie Tatum for a monthlong moratorium on Klay’s transfer. That will end Friday. Tatum said she has taken the issue under advisement and expects to make a decision soon.