War Declared on Painful Memories

Moulton Meadows Park offers one of Orange County’s most spectacular panoramas. It’s a stretch of flat land atop a big hill overlooking Laguna Canyon. From there, you can take in the Pacific, Catalina and a sweeping view of Laguna Beach and surrounding valleys.

In a corner of Moulton Meadows on July 12, a Saturday, you can spread a blanket and watch a breathtaking sunset from the shadows cast by 20 king-size warrior figures. This dramatic and ambitious art exhibit will be the creation of Laguna Beach sculptor Cheryl Ekstrom.

Ekstrom has the resolute belief that we all need to free ourselves from past painful memories. This score of 6-foot, 6-inch plaster figures, each with a shield and a 10-foot lance, could mean something different to each viewer. But to Ekstrom, they will help us face down our memories.

She calls the upcoming exhibit “Extreme Unction.” A healing.

I interviewed Ekstrom at her beautiful, Greek-style ocean view home, built by her husband, Dennis Ekstrom. It’s filled with many of the beautiful pieces she has sculpted, some from metal scraps thrown away by others. I discovered that the genesis for this bigger-than-life project began with the pain of her own past.

Last year, not long after her mother died of cancer, her brother, Russell Simon, was stabbed to death in his Culver City home. The killer was someone he had taken in as a kindness when the man was down on his luck. Ekstrom displays in her library a piece of pop art that her brother had mailed to her. It arrived the day after his death.

“You cannot let your memories hold you back,” Ekstrom said. “We have to move forward. That’s what ‘Extreme Unction’ does for me. This is my release. The warriors are the fighters who help protect us while we heal.”

The show has been a major undertaking. Ekstrom had to get permits from the city Arts Commission and the City Council. She also needed approval from the county, because the armatures will stand on rugged terrain just outside the park, in the adjacent Aliso/Woods Canyons Regional Park. She also posted a required $1-million insurance bond.

Ekstrom even took two semesters of welding classes at Orange Coast College to help assure consistency among the 20 pieces. She started the class hoping to gain enough skill to supervise a welder for her warriors. Ekstrom discovered she loved it so much she wound up doing the welding herself.

“She’s amazing,” said her welding instructor, Bill Galvery. “She’s shown me how welding techniques can be applied to the field of art. It’s been a joy having her in class.”

The exhibit will go up in midafternoon, so visitors can remain for the sunset. A crowd is expected early Sunday morning too, for the sunrise. The armatures will be removed Sunday afternoon and taken to the Diane Nelson Gallery in Laguna Beach for display.

The pieces completed so far are under wraps at her studio. But I’ve seen the sketches and the site where the warriors will stand high above the city. It’s a good bet a lot of south Orange County residents are going to find their way to Moulton Meadows Park that weekend for a look themselves.

MOMS the Word: Maternal Outreach Management System Resource Center is quite a mouthful. Most just know it as MOMS. It’s a nonprofit group that helps low-income women in Orange County prepare for childbirth and the first year of child care.

Last Friday, the MOMS staff threw a party to celebrate a new location--117 W. 4th St. in Santa Ana. MOMS had been located in a corporate building on Dyer Road in Santa Ana. But it primarily served its clients by telephone. MOMS didn’t have the room to be a full resource center.

“We didn’t really have any place for the women to come to,” said Sofia Negron, the group’s health education director. “We decided we needed to be closer to our clients, and have a place for them to come in to our classes.”

MOMS moved into its second-story office above the Excelsior newspaper less than two months ago. It just completed its first class for 12 women--and all of them lived close enough to walk there.

Before Toll Roads: Hilda Reafsnyder recalled an Orange County that’s hard for some of us to even imagine:

“I came to Garden Grove at the age of 4, in 1912. My father had purchased 40 acres of land at Brookhurst and Chapman avenues. We arrived by horse and buggy.”

I wonder what 40 acres in that location would cost you today? Reafsnyder, who died a few years ago, preserved some of her history, something that will benefit all of us.

Her comments were recently printed by the Garden Grove Historical Society, an example of the importance of oral and written histories. Meeting at the group’s headquarters on Euclid Street tonight, members will hear from Toby Young, a writer who lectures frequently on why it’s important to preserve such memories.

I’ve asked Evelyn Newcomb, vice president of the historical group, to let me know if that effort produces any new histories from its members, so I can pass on some of it to you.

Wrap-Up: I’d like to share a story Cheryl Ekstrom told me about her husband, Dennis. He wanted to be an artist, but early in life, because of his father’s ill health, he was pressed into running the family’s industrial paint manufacturing company.

Dennis Ekstrom kept in his desk drawer at the company a picture he looked at almost daily for 25 years. It depicted a contented artist working at his drawing board, with a huge picture window showing a rainy city.

Some day, Ekstrom told himself, he would be that artist. A few years ago he sold his interest in the business to his brother, set up a studio and became the man in the picture. Except his studio’s picture window is filled with the blue of the Pacific, instead of a rainy city.

Recently he gave the treasured old picture to his wife’s son from an earlier marriage, to help propel him toward his dreams too.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by call-ing the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com