UCLA Youth Camps Face Demolition

Two camps in the San Bernardino Mountains, run for decades by UCLA’s University Religious Conference for underprivileged and disabled children, are facing demolition unless the campus ministry center can find money to refurbish the camps or find another group to take them over, according to UCLA officials.

Students from UCLA have helped thousands of children at the camps since University Camp was started in 1939. The 11-acre site by the Santa Ana River has a dining hall, two lodges, an infirmary, a pool and tent sites. A 13-acre camp with similar facilities was begun several years after World War II.

Unless the deteriorating sites are improved and reactivated, the camps at Barton Flats inside the San Bernardino National Forest must be returned to their natural state and permits relinquished to the government before 1997, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

The campus conference officials said that water clarity problems surfaced at the camps during the 1990 drought, and by 1991, the camps were closed because of water problems and new, tougher codes.

Money is the problem, said George Senko and Mary Lou Edwards, treasurer and office manager, respectively, at the University Religious Conference.

“Costs to demolish the sites will be huge--between $100,000 and $350,000,” Senko said. Refurbishment would cost between $250,000 and $500,000 for each, he said.

“Once they’re demolished, they will probably never be resurrected, not only because of the cost in millions of dollars but also because of the tremendous amount of government paperwork,” Senko said.

PEOPLE

White Bear Fredericks, a noted spiritual elder of the Hopi tribe, was scheduled to speak at the Philosophical Research Society on Sunday, but the 95-year-old Native American elder died in his sleep May 11. A memorial will be led at 11 a.m. Sunday by Obadiah Harris, president of the society, 3910 Los Feliz Blvd., Los Angeles, who will speak about prophecy in the Hopi tradition. (213) 663-2167.

* Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton will be a guest at the Memorial Day services Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove. Also appearing at the services with the Rev. Robert H. Schuller will be the U.S. Navy Band, a Navy color guard and a 10-story-high U.S. flag unfurled inside the sanctuary. Actor Blake Ewing, 10, who played the rich kid in the “Little Rascals” movie, will sing “God Bless America.” (714) 971-4000.

* Rhonda Fleming Mann will be honored at a reception Tuesday afternoon at UCLA for her “commitment to spiritual care” at UCLA Medical Center. The former film star not only donated funds to refurbish the Medical Center Chapel/Meditation Center, but also made major gifts to the Rhonda Fleming Mann Resource Center for Women With Cancer, said the Rev. David Myler, the medical center’s director of pastoral care. “The resource center . . . has emphasized a holistic response to the needs of women with cancer, thereby providing all-important spiritual support for those women,” Myler said. (310) 825-7484.

* With a $1-million gift from Vons markets co-founder Wilfred L. Von der Ahe and his wife, Mary Jane, St. John’s College and Seminary has established two endowed chairs at the two training campuses for priests in Camarillo. Father Charles E. Miller will become chair of homiletics and liturgy at the seminary and Father Calixto Lopez will be the chair of philosophy at the college.

SOCIAL ACTION

A training program for minority clergy and lay leaders in community conflict resolution will begin two years of classes in September, including a two-week “immersion experience” in South Africa. The application deadline is June 1, said Rudy Carrasco, coordinator of Christian Leaders Empowering for Reconciliation with Justice (CERJ). The principal funder is the Pew Charitable Trusts. A class of 20 Los Angeles-area clergy and lay leaders will be chosen from African American, white, Asian and Latino congregations. Chairing the local CERJ committee is Nazarene minister Michael Mata of the School of Theology at Claremont. For information, (213) 387-2822.

CONGREGATIONS

The 60-family St. Matthew Orthodox Church of Torrance, an English-speaking congregation formed by Eastern Orthodox Christians of various national origins, will dedicate its new worship complex at 2368 Sonoma St. at 10 a.m. Sunday. Archbishop Philip, the ranking prelate in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, will preside at the rites, which include symbolic washing of the altar and applying holy myrrh, an oil prepared each year in Damascus. (310) 782-9468.

* Rededications: West Hollywood Presbyterian Church, 7350 Sunset Blvd., on Sunday rededicated its remodeled sanctuary after repairs were made to areas damaged by heavy rain in January 1995. At 10 a.m. on June 2, the Neighborhood Congregational Church of Laguna Beach, 340 St. Ann’s Drive, will rededicate its sanctuary, which had been damaged by fire April 23 last year.

DATES

Jesuit Father Gregory J. Boyle, director of Jobs for a Future, a referral and mentoring center in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights for at-risk youths, will speak at the University of La Verne baccalaureate service at 4 p.m. today at La Verne Community Church of the Brethren, 2425 E St. The priest was known for his work with young gang members while pastor of Dolores Mission Church from 1986 to 1992.

* The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Southern California (West) Synod will open its three-day annual assembly Thursday at the Burbank Airport Hilton Hotel. The Rev. Rudolph Featherstone, coordinator of cross-cultural studies at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, will give the keynote speech. The closing Eucharist will be at 11:30 a.m. June 1. (213) 387-8183.

* In a look at the history of book bans in the United States, Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles will hold a symposium at 7:30 p.m. Thursday featuring C. James Schmidt, chief librarian at San Jose State University and past chairman of the American Library Assn.’s Committee on Intellectual Freedom. The symposium, which costs $2, will be at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W. Pico Blvd. (310) 553-1574.

* Classical music of India will be performed June 1 in San Diego to commemorate the 50th anniversary of “The Autobiography of a Yogi,” by Paramahansa Yogananda, founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship based in Los Angeles. Sitarist Kartik Seshadri will perform in concert at the Civic Theatre, starting at 7 p.m. Brother Mitrananda, of the fellowship’s monastic community in Encinitas, will lecture after the concert on the life of Yogananda. (213) 225-2471.

* About 50 paintings and sculptures by 12 Israeli and Palestinian artists will be featured in an exhibition beginning Tuesday at the reopened Pauline Hirsh Gallery at the Jewish Federation Council building, 6505 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. (213) 852-3240.

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