The Magic of ‘King Erick’

Everyone who knew Erick Bozzi believed there was something magical about him--a gift for the surreal, perhaps, that he brought to America from his native Colombia.

Like some star-struck character in a Gabriel Garcia-Marquez novel, he could always blur the line between reality and that fantastic world of fiction--especially with the children.

At his after-school programs, the young ones called him King Erick--the long-haired director with the lilting accent who always forsook those stuffy suits for a T-shirt and shorts. To them, he was the little boy in a man’s body who could kick a soccer ball a mile in his bare feet and who always knew just the right thing to say to make them feel they belonged in this strange world run by adults.

The parents respected him, too, because they knew Bozzi had sacrificed a successful legal career in South America to establish his Sports Theater Arts and Recreation program, which was to reach 33 schools in Los Angeles and Sacramento.

And in the end, they all respected the way Erick Bozzi died, how for nearly two years he fought back the devastating effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease--a malady that eventually put him in a wheelchair and took away his power of speech--how he kept living so he could realize his dream of establishing a Culver City children’s museum for the students he loved.

This week, more than 400 tearful people gathered on the lot behind Overland Elementary School in West Los Angeles, where Bozzi once played soccer, to pay tribute to a man they all believed brought a touch of magic to their lives.

At 46, they said, their King Erick, this Renaissance man who was part intellectual, musician, sculptor, filmmaker and poet, all with the heart of a child, had died too young.

“Erick was a true visionary,” said 22-year-old Nasim Dashti, who attended Bozzi’s after-school program and later returned to work for him. “He knew it wasn’t enough to just baby-sit children after school. He took the opportunity to teach them real skills at a very young age.

“And the children adored him. More than being any authority figure, they knew he was their friend.”

Born in Cartagena in 1950, Bozzi became a corporate lawyer but soon grew disenchanted with what he saw as the greed of big business. Against his family’s wishes, he quit his job and immigrated to America in 1980 to study at the UCLA film school.

He went on to produce a documentary on farm worker advocate Cesar Chavez and in 1984 produced “A Small Voice in the Crowd,” a film on latchkey children that changed his life.

“Erick spent a year going across the country talking to experts about what happened to kids without supervision, examining the soaring pregnancy rates and increased violent crime,” recalled his widow, Katya. “He came home to me and he said, ‘We have to do something about this.’ And he realized the answer was in the schools, because they were already there in the neighborhood.”

That year, Bozzi started an after-school program at Overland Elementary, which his son and daughter attended--a program that provided hands-on training in such wide-ranging areas as computers, ceramics, cooking, gymnastics, self-defense and foreign languages.

The nonprofit program, which charged $125 a month, competed with the after-school program run by the Los Angeles Unified School District on campus.

“Erick provided such a healthy environment,” said Dashti. “There were counselors to help you with your homework and there were things to do. At the district’s program they just threw you a few balls and that was it. After a while, all their kids wanted to sneak in and join what we were doing.”

Parents who came to pick up their children were greeted by a man some remembered as “a longhaired cigarette-smoking camp counselor.” But soon they got to know the wily free-spirited character that lay just underneath.

Bozzi had a unique way to look at any child’s world.

With the most timid children, he played the game of the invisible parrot on his shoulder, the one with the chocolate wings and golden claws that spoke only to them.

On the playground, he would play hopscotch and soccer, do the Hula Hoop and shoot baskets--never as a coach, but as a fellow kid. On outings he drove the yellow school bus and once asked a lifeguard’s permission to throw his laughing kids, one by one, from the diving board into a local public pool.

Bozzi was an avid reader who loved Ernest Hemingway and was as comfortable reciting works by poet Garcia Lorca to his students as he was reading them a nursery rhyme.

One day, teachers recalled, Bozzi ran into an art room and jumped onto a table and yelled, “Who’s the king?” And as they always did, the children screamed, “You are, Erick!”

His only vice, those who loved him said, came in the moments stolen to smoke a cigarette in a back room or between some buildings. Said one parent: “I would have thought that Erick was a saint if I didn’t catch him out back smoking every once in awhile.”

In time, Bozzi’s program spread to 33 schools--28 in Los Angeles, five in Sacramento, employing 600 people.

But in the fall of 1995, something began to happen to Bozzi: His hands became numb. He began asking people to write down numbers for him, and he could no longer help teachers carry art supplies from their cars.

One night at dinner, he asked Katya to cut his meat for him. That’s when she sent him to the doctor. In December of that year, Bozzi was found to have Lou Gehrig’s disease, which slowly deteriorates the muscle mass.

By May of this year, he had stopped walking and was placed on a respirator. For his family, friends, even his students, the only way to communicate with King Erick was by reading his smile and the wink of his eye.

As his health deteriorated, Bozzi struggled to raise $1 million in scholarship funds and establish a children’s museum somewhere in Culver City. When a friend found a vacant flower shop, Bozzi’s last dream was made complete.

This summer, in a ceremony attended by hundreds of supporters, Bozzi was driven by bus and wheeled into his new Exploration Station. Seeing the tears in his eyes, his family and friends knew how he felt.

It was to be King Erick’s last time with his students. He died Sept. 11.

On the overcast evening of Bozzi’s memorial, students lit candles, sang songs and recited poetry written by their friend and mentor. For more than three hours, students, faculty and parents rose to offer their memories.

At one point, the crowd stood and repeatedly yelled “Bravo, Erick!” as though in reaction to one of the plays he had written for his students. Then several children presented his family with a tiny plastic-jeweled ceramic crown they had made on Bozzi’s behalf.

His widow remembered how, just before the dusk service, the dark clouds had cleared and how a few 10-year-olds had pointed to two rainbows arcing across the southern sky.

“They came running, saying, ‘Look, King Erick sent us a rainbow. He’s here!’ ” Katya said. “That’s how they felt about him.”