Living the Dream

Nearly every Friday for three decades, John D. Alexander and George T. Kopoulos have gotten together for their noon Rotary Club meeting at the Odyssey Restaurant.

Over lunch, the longtime friends help plan community service projects, catch up on each other’s families and swap eggplant recipes.

Alexander, an African American from Pacoima, and Kopoulos, a Greek American from North Hills, have seemingly set aside racial, cultural and ethnic barriers and formed an enduring relationship.

“You hear people say, ‘I have a black friend or a white friend,’ ” said Alexander, 76, a retired real estate broker. “What difference does it make if the person is white, black, red or green? A friend is a friend.”

“I came from the slums of Pittsburgh where there were all races,” said Kopoulos, 74, a retired Valley College administrator and history professor. “I have developed a sense that there is no difference between people.”

Despite increases in reported hate crimes and lagging organized efforts at integration, Alexander, Kopoulos and many others like them have managed on a very basic human level to live out the principles of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whose birthday is celebrated today, and who envisioned a society where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

When Kopoulos wanted to sell a piece of property, he gave Alexander the listing. When Alexander was named a Rotary district governor, he appointed Kopoulos to a leadership position. When Alexander had open heart surgery, Kopoulos was at his hospital bedside. And when Kopoulos had knee surgery, Alexander visited him at home.

“I respect John for his strong commitment to anything he does,” Kopoulos said. “I admire his spunk and his determination to do well.”

“We have the same goal of helping others,” Alexander said. “And that takes precedence over everything else.”

Treva Smith-White, 42, an African American woman from Lake View Terrace, and Ann Keren-Zvi, 47, a Jewish woman from Mid-Wilshire, met 16 years ago while working as a team of visiting nurses in the San Fernando Valley.

Long hours spent driving between patients’ homes created an atmosphere where they talked openly about their families, faith and values.

“Treva is my mentor,” said Keren-Zvi, now a postgraduate student at UCLA. “I just really respect a lot of things about her. She has a lot of positive, good energy and I like to be around people like that.”

“We both believe in treating people fairly regardless of gender, color and ethnicity,” Smith-White said. “We can see beyond a person’s actions and see their heart. Sometimes people have issues that cause them to act the way that they do. We are both people who love people.”

The two women have celebrated birthdays together, shopped for maternity clothes, shared meals and learned to respect and appreciate each other’s culture and religion.

Political leaders have come and gone, affirmative action has been embraced and rejected, and the number of hate crimes reported in Los Angeles rose from 438 to 571 between 1994 and 1996 (the final tally for last year is unavailable). Through it all, the women remained friends. They still see each other frequently even though they no longer work together.

Rather than dwell on tough subjects, such as Christians who call Jews Christ-killers and Jewish landlords in black neighborhoods, Smith-White and Keren-Zvi prefer to embrace the many things they have in common.

“She is Jewish, and she felt that there were things about Christianity that she understood and respected. And as far as me being a Christian, there are things about Judaism that I understand and respect,” said Smith-White, who attended Keren-Zvi’s son’s bris, or ritual circumcision.

And Keren-Zvi felt just as comfortable in a black crowd at a Patti LaBelle concert. “I had never been in a crowd that was all black,” she said. “I felt very comfortable because Treva was there, and because of the music, and because everyone was there to have a good time.

“I also began to wonder if black people feel the same way when they are in a completely white atmosphere,” she said.

Keren-Zvi credits her father, a rural family practitioner, with teaching her racial tolerance. “I remember going through Texas and seeing a sign that said, ‘No blacks allowed,’ and asking my father what it meant,” she recalled. “He told me that some people are jerks and refuse to serve other people.”

As a child of the 1960s, who grew up in tiny North Fork, Calif., near Yosemite National Park, Keren-Zvi said she was deeply influenced by King’s teachings.

“When Martin Luther King came along it was a very powerful time--it was painful--but it was a very powerful time to be alive,” Keren-Zvi said. “To hear someone speak so eloquently about peace. . . . It was a very moving time for a lot of reasons. I feel sad sometimes that it didn’t continue on.”

Rose Sarian, 24, and her good friend, Cynthia Barraza, 26, were not yet born when the civil rights leader was stopped by an assassin’s bullet April 4, 1968. Yet, they weathered their own racial firestorm during the 1992 riots.

Sarian, an Armenian American from Glendale, and Barraza, a Latina from Highland Park, were working as editors on the Glendale Community College newspaper when rioting broke out.

Barraza, an administrative assistant at the JPL Laboratory in Pasadena, saw the looting, arson and other violence as “irresponsible behavior,” while Sarian viewed the tumult as an expression of “justified anger.”

“The thing about our relationship is that . . . we respect each other’s differences and opinions and we move on,” Sarian said. “It never leads to anything that is completely charged up.”

Sarian, an office manager for Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg in Van Nuys who has mostly learned about King from history books and filmed speeches, said she is moved by his message. “Whenever I listen to his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, I get very emotional. I think that it is in the back of everyone’s mind to want to live in a world where people live side by side peacefully.”

King’s timeless plea for unity among “black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” easily could have been the theme of a weeklong national dialogue on race that ends today.

The Days of Dialogue, born of the racially divided reactions to the O.J. Simpson verdict in 1995, have been bringing together Angelenos of various racial and ethnic groups to talk openly and honestly about race. Discussion groups were held at 160 sites for six days beginning Jan. 14. Similar events were held in 60 cities nationwide.

President Clinton has called for still another series of informal conversations about race, to take place in town hall meetings across the country. New policies and legislation may arise from the discussions, which began last fall in Akron, Ohio.

“Of all the questions of discrimination and prejudice that still exist in our society, the most perplexing one is the oldest and, in some ways today, the newest--the problem of race,” Clinton said when he unveiled his initiative in a commencement speech at UC San Diego last June.

Still, it seems like the battle of bigotry is being fought and won, not only through grand race relations initiatives, but through cross-racial friendships.

“When we take the opportunity to get to know other people, it enhances our lives,” said Avis Ridley-Thomas, head of the Dispute Resolution Program in the city attorney’s office and a Day of Dialogue organizer. Her husband, Councilman Mark Riley-Thomas, helped launch the local sessions.

“We have a better quality of life. We have broader experiences,” she continued. “You can’t anticipate the good that can come from being open to people from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.”