No Bowl Easter Sunrise Service

For thousands of Southlanders it will feel a bit like Thanksgiving without a turkey or Christmas without a tree when the sun rises Sunday morning without Easter services at the Hollywood Bowl.

One of the nation’s best-known Easter observances has been canceled this year because the stage shell at its storied locale is in the midst of a $25-million refurbishment.

The new shell will be 30% larger, and there will be a revolving stage. The work is scheduled to be completed by the start of the bowl’s 83rd summer season June 25.

But the 83rd Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service will have to wait until next year.

Instead of 120 children of the Living Cross Youth Choir singing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” several dozen Boy Scouts and other volunteers will line up in the Bowl’s parking lot at 5:30 a.m. Sunday to turn worshipers away with a smile -- and inform them of the sunrise service up the road at Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills.

“It’s going to be very traumatic for people who don’t know about the cancellation and who show up Sunday morning,” said Norma Foster, president of the nonprofit organization that has produced the event for nearly 60 years. “We will make sure to wish them happy Easter before we turn them around.”

The free nondenominational service celebrating the resurrection of Christ has been a predawn Los Angeles tradition since 1921 -- with choirs, sermons, the singing of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and the grand finale, a release of doves. For many of those years it has been televised, and typically it has drawn 12,000 to 17,000 to the amphitheater.

The Bowl event has been canceled just a few times, all because of renovations at the facility.

For families like the Chans of Los Angeles, the absence of the service this year will disrupt tradition.

“I can’t even remember an Easter without the sunrise service,” said Gina Chan, 27, whose parents began taking their five children to the event about 15 years ago. “You know, when the sun comes up over the Bowl, when you wake in the dark and then you are there for the new day, we all just love it -- even my brothers.”

The Chans have even served as ushers and stayed late to help count the donations collected at the service. Chan says they can’t seem to bring themselves to go to the Forest Lawn service but have volunteered to greet people who happen to show up at the Bowl on Sunday.

“We’re all very disappointed, but at least we will all be home for breakfast this year,” she said.

Up the road, Wilma Joanis, a vice president of Forest Lawn, said the Hollywood Hills memorial park would set up the usual 2,000 chairs beneath the mosaic in the Court of Liberty for its 6 to 7 a.m. service, featuring the youth choir from Grace Baptist Church in Santa Clarita and a sermon by Dr. Lloyd Ogilvie, retired U.S. Senate chaplain.

“We’re just not sure how many people we will get because of the Hollywood Bowl closure,” Joanis said. “I’d rather have people standing than too many empty chairs.”

Trina Herman Boychenko, 46, whose family has been involved with the Bowl service for three generations, said Forest Lawn offered a nearby outdoor alternative. But for her family at least, it won’t be quite the same.

Boychenko’s father, Bud Herrmann, who died in 1985, was a longtime volunteer who rose to be president of the Hollywood Bowl Easter Sunrise Service organization, a post he held 11 years. Trina started singing in the children’s choir at age 5, and her daughters Erika, 8, and Natasha, 10, wear the white choir robes on Easter morning.

Boychenko will attend a later service inside her own church on Sunday. “But next year,” she said, “we will be back.”