Southland Savors Easter Traditions

As the sun flickered over the Hollywood Hills Sunday morning, Farrah Cho stood just offstage at the Hollywood Bowl and explained the significance of Easter sunrise services.

“Every day, you’re really busy all the time, and then you wake up on Easter and you realize that God has risen,” said the 11-year-old who rose at 3 a.m. and traveled from Norwalk to be a part of the children’s Living Cross. “It’s cool.”

After a five-year absence because of off-season construction projects, the time-honored Easter sunrise service returned to the Hollywood Bowl at 5:30 a.m.

Seven clergy members, six choirs, three organists, one hand bell choir, plus a ballet troupe, gospel soloist, poem reader, bass and percussion group, and 79 white doves participated in the 90-minute service.

Elsewhere in the Southland, worshipers in Ventura County wrapped themselves in blankets to fend off the cold at a chilly outdoor sunrise service at Lake Casitas, and white doves were released at dawn at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. Later in the morning, meals and money were distributed in downtown Los Angeles to the homeless.

Testing a new way of reaching suburban families, Orange County’s Saddleback Valley Community Church, which drew 9,000 worshipers to observances on church grounds, beamed a live camera feed to a movie theater in a shopping center three miles away. In the Mojave Desert, the Mojave House of Prayer had a drive-up-style sunrise service, with about 500 worshipers in cars, trucks and recreational vehicles attending a youth presentation with Red Rock Canyon as a backdrop.

At the Hollywood Bowl, thousands of people celebrated the holiest of Christian holidays. The day of song, sermons and sunrise services celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, as told in the Bible.

“On this day, throughout the world, we are exhorted to joy,” said Bishop Gerald E. Wilkerson, Vicar-General of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, who carried a message from the pope. “Let us rejoice and be glad.”

Many came to worship in pajamas. A few even sported bunny-rabbit slippers. Others were decked out in their spring finest, with brightly colored Easter bonnets perched on their heads in the predawn darkness.

“I am so happy it’s back at the Bowl,” said Ida Manuel-Stovall of Redondo Beach, who said she has been coming to the sunrise service for 20 years. Though worshipers missed out on a Technicolor sunrise because of heavy cloud cover, Manuel-Stovall beamed up at the gray sky. “It was so beautiful this morning.”

One of the most famous of Easter celebrations, the service began as a gathering for silent film stars in 1919 near the site of the present Hollywood Bowl. It was such a huge success that in 1921 it was moved to an area then known as Daisy Dell, a natural bowl with excellent acoustics. And the Hollywood Bowl came into being.

The service remained a tradition for more than 70 years, moving to Hollywood High School’s stadium in 1926 while the stage and shell were constructed.

In 1993, the tradition almost ended because of a rift between longtime organizers and a television ministry that broadcast the event worldwide. After a heated court battle, organizers retained the right to produce the event. Then, for the past five years, it was held indoors at another Hollywood facility during renovations at the Bowl. It is free to the public, financed by donations.

Observing the services once again in the Bowl, Trina Hermann Boychenko, president of the board of directors of the Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service Inc., said the service “made me feel tremendous . . . and old.”

Hermann-Boychenko participated in the living cross when she was a child. As a teenager, she met her husband at the service when she drafted him to help with the production. On Sunday, her children, Natasha and Erika, participated in the Living Cross.

“It was wonderful to be back home here in the Bowl,” she said with a yawn. “I haven’t slept since Friday, but that’s also a tradition.”

Elsewhere, volunteers at the Union Rescue Mission in downtown Los Angeles dished up traditional Easter dinners to about 3,000 needy people. The Midnight Mission provided another 1,000 meals. And the Catholic priest known as “Father Dollar Bill” said he was giving away hundreds of dollar bills at the Fred Jordan Mission. Father Maurice Chase earned his nickname for his efforts on behalf of the down and out in Los Angeles.

More than 3,000 turned out for sunrise services at Forest Lawn Memorial parks in Glendale and the Hollywood Hills. White doves were released at dawn on the forecourt of the Birth of Liberty Mosaic at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. At the Glendale park, the Hispanic Baptist Churches of the Southwest presented a Spanish-language narration of the story of Jesus Christ’s life in the Hall of Crucifixion-Resurrection.

In the Mojave Desert, the carhop service kept alive a long-standing tradition of the Mojave House of Prayer. The first Easter service was held there 93 years ago, led by an itinerant minister preaching from horseback to a congregation in horse- and oxen-drawn wagons, said Pastor Kenneth Tweedt

“It was so beautiful and majestic,” Tweedt said. “[Red Rock Canyon] State Park filled to capacity with campers on Saturday and people were parked right up to the cliffs. We had the service overlooking the pinnacles; we had a little wind, and we had a fabulous response to the special music from our young people.”

Wrapped in blankets to fend off Ventura County’s cold morning air, parishioners at the Ojai Valley Community Church’s annual sunrise service at Lake Casitas swayed, sang and listened to Pastor Paul Bergmann’s holiday sermon.

As fog shrouded the lake, motorboats skirted across its glassy surface in the distance and herons and blackbirds flitted in the reeds at the water’s shore.

“I’ve been in cathedrals all over Europe, but nothing compares to a beautiful setting like this,” said Bergmann.

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Times staff writer Peter M. Warren in Orange County, correspondent Katie Cooper in Ventura County, and Times wire services contributed to this story.