He Marries Success With Service

This county is loaded with citizenry ready to do for others. People who help their neighbors, run marathons for worthy causes, shell out to send youngsters to camp. But here’s a new one for you:

An elected government official who will work on his off days for free. He will officiate at your wedding and ask that you write out a check for his fee--$150--directly to some type of worthwhile, nonprofit youth program here in Orange County. At a time when even a night in the Lincoln bedroom at the White House has a price tag on it, that seems pretty refreshing to me.

When a reader first called to tell me about this, I admit I was skeptical. Until he mentioned who the do-gooder was. I might have known: Gary L. Granville. Public service to Granville has never been about making the extra buck.

Granville, 67, is Orange County’s clerk-recorder. A former city editor for a newspaper in Santa Ana, he was appointed to take over the county clerk’s job in 1984. The first thing he did was put together a report that recommended his job be eliminated. What kind of government official is that? He argued the county clerk and the county recorder’s jobs should be combined, as they had been once before. He contended it could save the county more than $400,000 a year.

The county supervisors kept putting off his idea and Granville kept getting reelected. Then, three years ago, the county finally agreed to combine those posts. When the first county clerk-recorder election was held in 1995, Granville ran against county recorder Lee Branch and thumped him like a bass drum for an easy victory.

Now Granville is back at it. He’s recommended to the county supervisors that the recorder’s job be combined with the county assessor’s job. There’s so much duplication in the two offices, it would save the county close to $750,000 a year, Granville contends.

Granville has a meeting scheduled for today with county Assessor Bradley L. Jacobs to try to convince him the merger is a sound one.

Jacobs need not worry about his job, should the supervisors adopt Granville’s idea. Granville says he doesn’t plan to run for reelection to any job when his current clerk-recorder term ends in 1999. He’s retiring from government service.

But he will keep busy with a few things, Granville said. Like performing weddings.

“I really enjoy it,” he said. “I’ve married people on beaches, boats, their favorite rocks with waves whipping around us. But it’s been fun.”

When Granville decided to officiate at weddings--he can legally do so in his current role, and even wear the robe--it never occurred to him to take any money for himself. The first year he raised nearly $5,000 for local causes. The past two years, he’s made some $30,000 for places like Olive Crest, a set of programs and group homes for abused children, or the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Ana. Try to picture how many elected officials you know who can pick up an easy bonus of 15 grand a year but refuse to take a penny of it. I’m sure there are some. But I can think of others in government who would see this as a nice little side deal for themselves.

Granville and his wife, Joanne, by the way, have a couple of huge days coming up in the next few weeks: Their 50th wedding anniversary and their 50th high school reunion. They began dating each other in the ninth grade.

Maybe it’s Granville’s powerful belief in the sanctity of marriage that keeps him from charging money for starting such mergers.

Growing Interest: I got a call from a reader the other day who sought help for an anniversary surprise for her husband. She wanted to know if she could take him to Arden, the old Helena Modjeska mansion and grounds in Modjeska Canyon.

It turns out you can do that during the week now. Beginning last year, Arden, the turn-of-the-century home for the great Polish actress, has been open to visitors the first and third Tuesdays of each month, as well as the second and fourth Saturdays of the month. But call the county Heritage office at (714) 855-2028 for reservations, which are required.

The treasures continue to mount for the people who are part of the Helena Modjeska Foundation. Jacek Galazka of Polish Heritage Publications in New York recently helped the foundation obtain a color copy of an oil portrait of Modjeska painted in Krakow in 1880, the height of Modjeska’s fame in Poland and about the time she was becoming famous in America.

Sometimes, however, buried treasure is the most exciting of all. Bonnie and Ron Smith, who live in Modjeska Canyon, recently discovered an old letter in the pages of a book given them many years ago by another canyon resident. To their amazement, the letter was written by Helena Modjeska to theatrical manager Daniel Frohman in the summer of 1888. The Smiths have donated the letter to the foundation.

Wrap-Up: Today is a huge day in this columnist’s life: My 5-year-old daughter marches off to her first day of kindergarten. (Anaheim has year-round school.) These changes in her young years are coming too rapidly for me.

The other night at the dinner table, she asked the question I was prepared to answer only after she had turned 21 or so: “Where do babies come from?”

I decided on the straight truth. No punches pulled. It was made difficult by my teenage son trying to interject that babies came from the backyard apricot tree.

It was hard to tell whether my frankness or the apricot theory impressed her the least. Her immediate response, after our convoluted explanations, was: “Can I watch TV now?”

The kindergarten teacher will be known to her class as Mrs. Johnson. My wife and I are wondering if Mrs. Johnson has any idea what she’s in for this summer.

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 tojerry.hicks@latimes.com