La Cañada History: Bob Mitchell’s Singing Boys performed in LCF

Ten Years Ago

La Cañada High School senior Katie Van Bogaert won the California Junior State Shooting Championship during a two-day match hosted by the California Rifle and Revolver Assn. Shooting a 22-caliber rifle, Van Bogaert scored 2,259 points out of a possible 2,400.

Twenty Years Ago

A La Cañada Flintridge woman, Mary Louise Whitson, died in an early morning fire that gutted the Rosebank Drive home she had lived in for 42 years. Her husband, Harland, survived the blaze.

Thirty Years Ago

The posting of 10 “Buckle Up” signs throughout the city climaxed the La Cañada Juniors’ three years of intensive efforts to raise community consciousness of the need to use seat belts while riding in vehicles to prevent serious injuries or death. A grant was made by the City Council to cover the cost of placing the signs at strategic locations near elementary schools and pre-schools.

Forty Years Ago

Foothill area residents were invited to attend Flintridge Prep’s Christmas “Festival of Lessons and Carols” at Trinity Lutheran Church in Pasadena. The festival was a recreation of the traditional service held at King’s College, Cambridge.

Fifty Years Ago

Bob Mitchell’s Singing Boys, an internationally known group called “the best choir in the world” by crooner Bing Crosby, was featured at the La Cañada Flintridge Women’s Club 1963 Christmas Tea, held at the La Cañada Country Club. Ranging in age from 9 to 14, the eight boys had just returned to the U.S. following a three-month tour of Europe where they entertained U.S. armed forces, the pope, as well as Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco.

Sixty Years Ago

The La Cañada branch of the Los Angeles County Public Library reported that November 1953 had been the biggest month in terms of circulation in the history of the local library. Leone Loos, branch librarian, said that an average of 396 books and magazines had been circulated each day the library had been open that month, for a total of 9,112 checkouts by patrons. During November of the previous year, the average had been 308 books borrowed each library day.

-- Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci