La Cañada History: YMCA received a big gift
Ten Years Ago
A man made off with slightly more than $800 worth of medication and other items from a La Cañada Flintridge pharmacy one Sunday in December 2003, after approaching the store’s counter and demanding the goods. The suspect, described as about 25 years old, left the store with greeting cards, a teddy bear, some prescription medications and some over-the counter drugs.
Twenty Years Ago
The La Cañada Flintridge City Council heard details of plans for new city entry signs, bus shelters and bus benches along Foothill Boulevard as part of the city’s master plan. In other business, the council awarded a bid for the construction of a 20-foot-wide driveway and parking facilities at the newly-dedicated museum, Lanterman House.
Thirty Years Ago
Bonnie and James Damron, parents of young swimmers Jim, Paige and Shannon, gifted the Crescenta-Cañada Family YMCA’s Dragon swim team a champion public address starter system in late 1983. It was reported to be the first such system owned by a YMCA in the U.S.
Forty Years Ago
According to an article that ran in the Dec. 20, 1973 issue of the Valley Sun, La Cañadans and their counterparts across the Southland were “ushering in perhaps the bleakest Yuletide ever.” The list of problems besetting local residents included the national energy crisis, gas shortages, a grocery strike and “cutbacks on everything including driving speed on the freeways,” the article stated. Only a few homes in the Flintridge hills boasted holiday strings of lights; other residents were conserving energy and kept their electrical decorations to a minimum.
Fifty Years Ago
The FBI announced that 23-year-old Barry Keenan, the son of John J. Keenan of the 4300 block of Commonwealth Avenue, had been arrested as one of three suspects in the Dec. 8, 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. The kidnappers had demanded and received a $240,000 ransom after taking the younger Sinatra from a hotel room in Stateline, Nev. John Keenan and his wife, Josephine, Barry’s stepmother, expressed shock and bewilderment over the news of his arrest.
Sixty Years Ago
The Angeles Sportsmen’s Club held its December 1953 Turkey Shoot at a range in Lopez Canyon. Dick Hansen of La Cañada was among those winning turkeys. The club held its regular meetings on the second Monday of each month at its clubhouse, an old Edison switching station on Angeles Crest Highway just north of La Cañada.
-- Compiled from the Valley Sun archives by Carol Cormaci.
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