Singing the Praises of a Good Cause

You can add to Sister Margaret Keaveney’s titles. The president and CEO of St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood is also “executive producer, SFMC Records.”

That’s her credit on “The Fruits of His Spirit Come Together,” a CD of spiritual songs by the St. Francis Group, newly uncovered talent on the hospital staff, among them two registered nurses, two secretaries and a mental health worker.

It all started, Keaveney explains, when some on the staff of 1,600 suggested that among them were those at least as gifted as the management types who traditionally entertained at the hospital’s annual fair.

“Were we embarrassed when we saw the talent that came forward,” she says. Thirty singers auditioned and 12 were chosen by their peers to cut the CD. By doing well, they’re doing good: Half of proceeds will go to the singers, half to scholarships for needy kids planning careers in health care.

The singers are as diverse as the community they serve. Mercedes Burgi, 30, an office medical coordinator, once sang professionally--”Spanish music with mariachis”--in nightclubs and theaters in her native Guadalajara. For the CD, she chose as her solo “Mirales, Eschuchales” (Look at Them, Listen to Them), which is “kind of like a prayer to God, asking him to help the kids.”

Derek Albert, 31, a system analyst, says he had no experience beyond “singing in the shower.” Others, like Kevin Willis, 26, a correspondence clerk, had sung at weddings and in church. Now he dares think of a singing career. If he makes it, he says, “I’ll come back and do a benefit” for the hospital.

Tawanda Washington, 27, who was a backup singer on an M.C. Hammer tour in 1990, figures that being a hospital collections specialist is just a blip along her road to stardom. “Singing is what I love to do, but I’ve got to pay my bills,” she says. Valorie Ingram, 37, a materials management assistant, used to sing in cafes with a band in St. Louis, but gospel music is her love. She sings “Trouble of the World” in tribute to her idol, Mahalia Jackson.

They signed on both for love of song and for the cause. Darlene Vaxter, 40, a supervisor in patient financial counseling, chose to sing “Ordinary People” in keeping with her philosophy that “the little you do can become so much if you do it from your heart.”

The CDs are for sale at the hospital gift shop and can be ordered through the public relations department. At $9.99, sales have reached 1,000 and, says Keaveney, the hospital is two-thirds of the way toward recouping its $15,000 initial investment.

She zeros in on a bare spot on a lobby wall, laughs and says, “We’ll be hanging the golden one up here soon.”

Now, a Christmas CD is planned. “Your second is always easier than your first,” she says. “At least that’s what they tell me in the birthing center.”

Racing the Deadline

to Get Down Under

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It’s thumbs up Down Under for the Los Altos High School solar car team, whose 11th-hour fund-raising effort, including an adopt-a-kilometer campaign, netted enough to send them to Australia for the World Solar Challenge starting Oct. 27.

Students at the Hacienda Heights school built the 16-foot Solar Shadow and raised close to $100,000 to cover costs of the car and to send 11 students and four advisors to compete in the nine-day race from Darwin to Adelaide.

Children Need More

Than Make-Believe

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Author Judy Blume, on censorship of children’s books: “Puberty is not a dirty word. It’s going to happen to the children of the Christian Coalition.”

During a panel discussion at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators at the Century Plaza Hotel, she observed, “The three S’s” make editors and publishers squirm--”sexuality, swear words and Satan.”

“Be brave,” she counseled children’s authors. “Don’t censor yourselves . . . be risky.”

Children’s author Bruce Coville also spoke of “satanically obsessed” critics, citing a woman who demanded deletion of a toad from a story because she’d heard people in California get high by licking toads.

Every spineless capitulation encourages censors, he cautioned. But, he emphasized, children’s writers must not take advantage of young minds by depicting gratuitous or age-inappropriate violence or sensationalized sex.

One of Jane Yolen’s books was burned publicly on a hibachi by a minister who objected to a gay character. She warned, “The people who are trying to censor the books are winning--as if you can burn ideas.”

All this, even as fewer titles get published each year. As Craig Virden, publisher of Bantam Doubleday Dell Books for Young Readers, put it, “It’s a bunny eat bunny world.”

Revisiting an

Old Nightmare

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A nightmare 30 years old is painfully vivid for Ethel Axelrad as she follows the investigation of the crash of TWA Flight 800.

On March 5, 1966, her husband, Philip Rosenberg, 52, president of Phil Rose of California sportswear, was one of 124 people killed in the crash of BOAC Flight 911 at the foot of Japan’s Mt. Fujiyama.

For 17 months, anguished families followed reports speculating on what happened to the 707 jet.

Finally, while acknowledging metal fatigue cracks in the plane’s tail, investigators cited “probable” pilot error. Taking off from Tokyo minutes before, the pilot had opted not to use instruments and may have misjudged while diverting from his course to give passengers a look at Fuji.

Axelrad was in Palm Springs with the couple’s daughter, Nancy, a UCLA senior, when she heard the news--”They interrupted the Johnny Carson show.” Although BOAC wouldn’t confirm for 41 hours that Rosenberg, who’d switched flights at the last minute, was on board, his wife says she knew when she called his hotel in Hong Kong, his destination, “and they said he hadn’t arrived.”

A granite obelisk stands today at the crash site in memory of those who died in what was then the third worst single plane commercial aviation disaster in history.

The remains of Rosenberg, known in the apparel industry as “wild, wild Rose” for his innovative promotional gimmicks, were never found.

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.