A Close- Up Look At People Who Matter : Crusader Takes a Tough Stand on Tobacco

Alex Andres likes to show the letter he got in 1963 from the American Tobacco Co.

“Our position has always been, and so expressed on numerous occasions, that smoking is a form of adult pleasure,” said the letter, now framed. “Again let me assure you that we definitely do not advertise to minors.”

The letter was a response to Andres’ complaint to the Los Angeles Dodgers about tobacco advertising in game broadcasts, one of the first blows he struck in a three-decade fight against the tobacco industry.

“I don’t mind being unpopular if I know I’m right,” said Andres, 85, from the office in his Woodland Hills apartment that is full of community service awards, memorabilia and albums of press clippings, some 20 years old.

Tobacco is not the only subject about which he is passionate. Vegetarianism, health, energy savings, the environment, the electric car and recycling are all subjects he says he can talk about for hours.

“He is very persistent,” said Lola Rabow, director of the Valley Senior Service and Resources Center in Reseda, which is run by the Organization for the Needs of the Elderly. “He is a creative thinker.”

Rabow, who has known Andres for about 11 years, has not always seen eye-to-eye with him. For example, she said they have long disagreed about the need for vegetarian meals at the center. But she appreciates his work to help the center with fund-raising. “Sometimes,” she said with a laugh. “we clash at times. Then we sit down and we have a big talk.”

Last year, when funding from the city fell short of covering the center’s homebound meals program for the elderly, Andres started a recycling program to raise extra money. By getting seniors and neighbors to recycle, his program raised more than $4,000 for the center, Rabow said.

Andres believes that by encouraging recycling, denouncing tobacco and encouraging a vegetarian lifestyle, he can extend and improve life.

“I say I’d like to live to be 115, but who knows,” Andres said. “I may die tomorrow.”

He scoffs at those who would say people his age are over the hill. The octogenarian swims for half an hour every day and takes weekly lessons in karate and Chinese healing exercises.

“The important thing is to enjoy life,” he said.

Andres retired in 1966 from the insurance agency that he owned and set out to use his sales skills in talks to schoolchildren and college students about the dangers of smoking.

In his presentations, he used a baby’s pacifier to mock the oral fixation of cigarettes. He would tell teens, “You can’t get a date if you stink,” to discourage them from taking up the habit. And he still has the shriveled, blackened smoker’s lung that he displayed to shock audiences.

Traveling around the world, he also made contacts with health departments in countries such as Uruguay and Israel, helping them to set up anti-smoking programs.

Andres’ dislike for tobacco goes back to a welding accident he had as a college engineering student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. The accident injured his eyes, making them extremely sensitive to smoke.

He said he approaches his work to reduce smoking with almost a religious fervor.

“But the best reward I got is the satisfaction in knowing I saved lives,” he said. “I helped people quit.”

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