Camarillo, 32, and Ojai, 75, Throw Parties to Celebrate Their Birthdays

It was a brace of birthday bashes in Ventura County on Saturday as Camarillo celebrated the 32nd anniversary of its incorporation and a more mature Ojai turned 75.

Camarillo marked its Oct. 22, 1964, cityhood with a 47-entry parade, birthday cake and fiesta in Constitution Park next to City Hall. The date is also the birthday of founder Adolfo Camarillo.

“We’ve lived on this street for five years and we’ve come to every [parade],” said Nancy Shirley as she sat on a deck chair on Ponderosa Drive with 3-year-old son Austin, who was clad in his father’s oversized jacket and a shiny red firefighter’s helmet perched jauntily on his head. “The Christmas parade is bigger . . . but this is a good local thing. I like to support the city.” Unfortunately, Shirley was in the minority.

Police estimated that fewer than 500 people watched the hometown parade along its nine-block route. The low turnout meant a personalized procession for the few people dotting empty expanses of suburban sidewalks as marchers--there were no floats and no out-of-town entries--addressed spectators with a friendly “Good morning, folks.”

“It’s gone down every year for the last two or three years,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Larson. “This parade just doesn’t draw people for some reason.”

The event is partly overshadowed by the larger Christmas parade that is less than two months away, organizers said. But it is also a reflection of Camarillo’s maturation from a small town where everyone knew everyone else to a bedroom community that engenders fewer ties among its residents, said Donna Morgan, fiesta committee chairwoman.

“They don’t get involved in the community,” she lamented.

Nevertheless, the annual event enables longtime residents to renew acquaintances.

“In 1964, everybody came to the parade,” said Grand Marshal Debbie Darby, the first-ever Miss Camarillo, adding that the number of familiar faces has at least remained relatively constant over the years. “I knew at least 50% of the people I waved to.”

For “old-timer” Cheryl Armstrong--who is two years younger than the city and would have been born there had a hospital existed at the time--the parade represents the closest thing she has to a sense of local heritage.

“It’s a traditional thing,” she said as she sat on the sidewalk with her husband and 3-year-old son, Hunter. “It’s a town where I grew up and now he’s growing up here. I’ve seen a lot of changes, but overall it feels pretty much the same. You still run into people you know all the time.”

The parade provoked memories, too, for 40-ish Jan Joswick, who grew up in Camarillo and had returned from her Cardiff by the Sea, Calif., home to attend the event for the first time in years with her 78-year-old father, Clary Gutzeit.

“When you used to come down the Conejo Grade, the only light you would see was the light on the motel on Ventura Boulevard--it was so dark,” she recalled. “Now it looks like the San Fernando Valley.”

The festivities proved much livelier in anything-goes Ojai, where crowds packed Libbey Park and a closed-off two-block area of downtown for a melange of events ranging from pumpkin carving to clogging demonstrations.

Ojai Day ’96 was being celebrated for the third time since its 1991 resurrection. But history appeared to be just an excuse for one heck of a party.

“I doubt that 90% of the people here realize why Ojai Days was started in the first place,” historian Dave Mason said.

Originally held in 1917 with a picnic and parade of the newfangled automobiles before dying out in the 1920s, the festival was meant to honor benefactor Edward Drummond Libbey. The Toledo, Ohio, businessman built a winter home in Ojai as well as most of its present-day landmarks, including the arcade and the park that were the center of Saturday’s festivities.

Still, Libbey would have approved, Mason believes.

“He would especially like the fact that nobody knows it’s honoring him, because he was a modest man,” Mason said.

The Ojai Valley Historical Society and Museum provided most of the historical perspective for the celebration. The group gave most people their first opportunity to see its renovated quarters in the former St. Thomas Aquinas Church, which Libbey also built.

Although the exhibits are still being moved, temporary historical displays traced Ojai’s history, the source of Libbey’s wealth via a display of his company’s glass products from Mason’s collection and a model railroad diorama depicting Ojai circa 1921. The exhibit will remain open weekend afternoons through Nov. 17.

Age proved no barrier to fun at the fete.

Beverley Banks of Chatsworth refused to act her 69 years, yielding to her grandchildren’s requests and enduring a long line of children to sit for a custom-made newspaper hat.

“This is the hottest thing in the park,” said the trendy senior, her eyes sparkling.