Fitting Tribute to a Life of Service

In his later years, Donald A. Strauss of Newport Beach told his wife, Dorothy, that he wished he could perform some type of service for others.

“I almost had to laugh aloud,” Dorothy Strauss said. “Because really, his whole life was a public service.”

Donald Strauss, who died two years ago at age 79, was a vice president of Beckman Instruments in Fullerton, retiring in 1989. Though a life in business brought him financial success, his main interests were public service.

He was a former mayor of Newport Beach, former city councilman and former member of the Newport-Mesa Unified school board. For many years he endowed scholarships and funded summer internships for college students.

After her husband’s death, Dorothy Strauss wanted to do something that would be a tribute to him and carry on the kind of work that exemplified his career. Her choice is a marvelous blend of scholarship and promotion of public service that you just know would have made him proud.

With moral support from her three children, she has established the Donald A. Strauss Public Service Scholarship Foundation. It now awards $10,000 scholarships to 10 California college juniors--$100,000 annually-- with this condition: The students must all submit proposals for public service projects. If selected, they must later report to the foundation trustees on how the project went.

The first set of scholarships was recently announced. Dorothy Strauss told me on Monday she was enormously pleased with the quality of the public service proposals. For example, she said, “We have one student working with troubled youths who will get them to help him build an inner-city garden. Another is making plans to work with homeless people in Moscow.”

Those are challenging goals. Dorothy Strauss sees it only getting better. She expects the number of scholarships to grow and include more schools. This year, the foundation invited 10 California colleges to participate. The foundation wound up providing scholarships to students at UC Irvine, Stanford, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, UC Berkeley, UC Riverside, UC Santa Cruz, Harvey Mudd College and two from UCLA.

Dorothy Strauss said she spent nearly a year just writing the foundation’s mission.

“This is something that we expect to live on long after I’m gone, and even after my children are gone,” she said. “We want future trustees of the foundation to be clear on what its purpose is.”

The UC Irvine scholarship winner was Amber Bosin of San Jose, a double major in biological sciences and dance. If that’s not enough to keep her busy, she also does volunteer work at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. Her proposal is to create a rhythm coordination class for youngsters at the hospital who can’t get out of bed much.

“It’s a chance to expose them to music, but also I think it will give them a chance to just forget for a little while the hospital environment around them,” Bosin said. “A hospital can be a difficult place for a child.”

Dorothy Strauss told me Bosin’s proposal is the kind of public service her husband would have loved.

They’re Baaaack! If you live anywhere near Disneyland and you’ve been wondering what happened to the fireworks, you probably figured it out Sunday night: boom! They’re starting a little later than last year, but they’re just as spectacular.

The fireworks show at Disneyland is a summer nightly ritual for thousands who live within a several square-mile radius, certainly including my 5-year-old daughter. When she heard the first crack in the air Sunday about 9:45 p.m., she was wearing one of my wife’s long nightgowns. “Hurry, hurry,” she yelled as she plodded her way in the bulky gown toward the door. (We have to head to the park a block away to see the fireworks well.)

Though they can’t hear them explode, many people say they can see the fireworks from several cities away. My wife and I seem to recall nightly fireworks running from Memorial Day to Labor Day. But park officials say there is no set date for them to begin each summer. They do, however, end each year on Labor Day.

Scratch & Sign: Have you heard about ASI, the employment agency in Orange that gives lottery tickets to the first 20 applicants for some of the jobs it has available? No need to apply, of course, if you hit the jackpot on your ticket.

Stacey Lane, ASI’s retail marketing director, said that with low employment in the county, some jobs are hard to fill.

“So you have to be creative to attract enough applicants,” she said. “We give one scratch-off ticket to each of the first 20 applicants. They seem to love it.”

The latest batch was for machine operators and packers. ASI got a good pool of applicants, though no one so far has hit the jackpot.

Arm of Safety: As a youngster, my son loved the old railroad cars and the toy train exhibit at the Children’s Museum in La Habra. The museum has a new exhibit, which opened Friday, to promote rail safety.

It’s a 5-foot-tall model safety signal, with a fully functioning drop arm and crossing lights that flash as it is lowered. The safety message is reinforced with a video cartoon.

The new exhibit was donated by the Union Pacific Foundation, as part of its railroad safety promotion.

Wrap-Up: You might remember Donald Strauss from past school board or City Council meetings in Newport Beach. Strauss was the fellow with the bow tie. It was such a trademark for him that at his retirement party at Beckman, everyone showed up wearing bow ties.

Strauss served on the City Council from 1978 to 1990. Before that, he served 10 years on the city’s school board.

After his death, former County Supervisor Marian Bergeson, who served on the school board with him, said this about Strauss:

“Don always caused our discussions to be more deliberate, presenting a side that nobody else had thought of. That’s how you reach the best decisions.”