Bears for Bosnia

Sometimes the urge to get involved is too much to bear for Fred Deni. And that explains why thousands of teddy bears these days are pouring in to the Santa Monica restaurant he owns.

Customers bring them when they come to eat. Delivery men drop them off out back. Schoolchildren shyly hand them over at the front entrance.

Everyone is waiting for Deni, 48, to take the stuffed toys to Bosnia-Herzegovina and hand them out to orphans and the mentally disabled in the battle-ravaged region.

All Deni has to do now is get the bears there. And few doubt that will be problem for a person who has a knack for cooking up the unexpected.

Friends say Deni was among the first to act on Santa Monica’s growing homelessness problem. When he noticed strangers rummaging through the trash bin behind his place in 1979, he decided to offer free Thanksgiving dinners--and more than 700 street people showed up.

He began providing free meals to the city’s elderly in the 1980s. He provided meals to firefighters during the disastrous 1993 Calabasas/Malibu brush fire. The next year he fed victims of the Northridge earthquake.

Last year, he decided to go on his own to Bosnia in hopes of helping feed war victims. Ray Corvan, director of Santa Monica’s chapter of the American Red Cross, was quick to write him a letter of introduction.

But Deni found that there was no work to do when he bought an airline ticket and arrived there in March.

Relief agencies in Sarajevo were already distributing dry food throughout the country and the wartime food shortage was over.

“Nobody wanted me,” Deni said.

Returning to Santa Monica, he provided free food for a Croatian group’s fund-raiser. But that event turned out to be only partially successful and Deni’s frustration remained until midsummer. That’s when one of his restaurant customers introduced him to Mark Steinberg.

Steinberg, a former Los Angeles lawyer, is a policy advisor to the U.S. State Department on the Bosnian missing persons issue. He mentioned to Deni that he had seen a mental hospital there that could use some help.

“Although the place was up and functional, it sorely needed a lot of things,” said Steinberg, a Los Feliz resident.

“A lot of the people there were hugging themselves, a number of kids were in cradles in fetal position. There were no toys, no objects to distract.”

After visiting the 400-bed Pazaric Social Institution, Steinberg thought of teddy bears. “They’re something people can uninhibitedly embrace,” he told Deni.

Replied Deni: “I can do teddy bears.”

*

The bears started arriving at the Back on Broadway restaurant the day after Deni taped up a small sign asking for donations.

It soon became apparent that there would be more bears than the Pazaric facility could use. So the International Red Cross in Sarajevo eagerly agreed to take any extras and distribute them to orphanages and to children receiving winter clothing this fall.

About 3,200 teddy bears have been donated so far. Deni has set Oct. 31 as the deadline for collecting his goal of 5,000. He is trying to arrange their delivery either through private package-shipping firms or the U.S. military.

Bears piled on chairs and counters at the restaurant at 2024 Broadway have puzzled first-time diners. “One lady wanted to know whether the bears were on sale at the regular price or at a sale price,” Deni said.

Restaurant regulars, however, are unfazed.

“Oops--that reminds me,” said Brentwood resident Betty Sheinbaum when her elbow accidentally bumped a bear and knocked it off a shelf behind her lunchtime seat.

“I’d better go buy Fred a bear.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Today’s centerpiece focuses on Santa Monica restaurant owner Fred Deni’s plans to bring teddy bears to orphans and the mentally disabled in Bosnia. For more information or to make donations, call (310) 453-8919.