La Cañada History: Dodgers’ then-general manager Buzzie Bavasi named La Cañadan of Year in 1960
Ten Years Ago
The La Cañada Flintridge City Council voted to allocate $4.5 million in Measure R funding for the design of 27 segments of sound walls that might be constructed along the 210 Freeway within the city’s limits. Measure R, approved by voters in 2008, was set up to funnel $40 billion in taxpayer money to traffic mitigation and transportation upgrades throughout Los Angeles County over a 30-year span.
Twenty Years Ago
Follow-home strong arm robberies targeting Asian women had been plaguing La Cañada Flintridge for some time, the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s Station reported. In January 2000, a 45-year-old woman became the eighth such victim in a 12-month period.
Thirty Years Ago
Martin D. Lewis, the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee in La Cañada, received a Five Star Award for the third time for meeting the fast food corporation’s highest standards for restaurant management, operations and customer satisfaction.
Forty Years Ago
On the occasion of his 15th anniversary as senior minister at La Cañada Presbyterian Church, the popular Dr. Gary Demarest was “roasted” during a special event held in his honor. He was also presented with a box of Kleenex and 400 cards written by church members.
Fifty Years Ago
A proposal to give La Cañada High School’s 403 seniors special off-campus privileges at lunchtime was shelved by the school board, with several board members expressing their doubts about the wisdom of the plan.
Sixty Years Ago
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ general manager, Emil Joseph “Buzzie” Bavasi, who moved to La Cañada when the Dodgers came to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in the 1950s, was named La Cañadan of the Year by the local Kiwanis Club in January 1960. (Bavasi, who first worked for the Dodgers in 1938 as an office assistant, left the team in 1968 to become president and minority owner of the San Diego Padres. He passed away in 2008 at the age of 93.)
Compiled from the Valley Sun archives.
