La Cañada’s service groups, threatened by attrition, keep powering forward

Compared to neighboring Pasadena and Glendale, La Cañada Flintridge is a relatively small town.

With just 40 years of cityhood under its belt, a population that hovers around 20,000 and an annual budget of $13 million, there are natural limits to what City Hall can accomplish on its own.

Thank God for volunteers.

If communities were measured, not by miles but by the earnest efforts of its citizenry to make that one corner of the world a better place while helping improve the lives of others in the process, La Cañada would be a mighty metropolis.

Extending well beyond city limits, the work done by La Cañada’s service groups is impressive. They cook for and feed L.A.’s homeless, run programs and clubs for school children and donate goods to local food pantries. They dignify the lives of strangers through good acts and donations that, when considered collectively, rival that $13-million city budget.

Then there are those whose deeds make the city of La Cañada Flintridge a better place to live, work and raise a family. Every year, tens of thousands of service hours are poured into French toast breakfasts, food drives, trail cleanups and drought tolerant demonstration gardens, not to mention the annual 100% volunteer-built LCF Tournament of Roses float.

“Our community groups do so much and are really the heart and soul of our city,” La Cañada Mayor Jon Curtis said in a recent interview. “We don’t have the staff, or even the depth and expertise these groups have — they’re pretty special.”

Ask anyone how it happens, and they’ll tell you it’s always been that way. That’s because many longtime service organization members have lived in La Cañada since before it gained cityhood and have volunteer records dating back nearly that far.

But in La Cañada, and in life, nothing stays the same forever. Times are changing, and many volunteer groups that support the community at large are reporting declining interest and membership, as well as heavier workloads for volunteers who aren’t getting any younger.

“A piece of the puzzle is the change in the people who live here, and a change in the interests they have and what they want to do,” said Bob Wallace, 84, president of the Kiwanis Noon Club and vice president of float development for the local Tournament of Roses Assn., two groups whose memberships are aging.

“The demographic is changing, too,” he continued. “When I came to La Cañada in 1962, JPL engineers could afford to buy a house here. They can’t do that anymore.”

Changing times

A skyrocketing housing market that’s beginning to rival famously rich locales such as Venice, Laguna Beach and even Beverly Hills is pricing out not only JPLers, but the city’s own sons and daughters.

Meanwhile, organizations that support local schools have become critical fundraising arms, generating millions annually for personnel, equipment and needed technology.

Club members say the increased focus on getting kids college-ready is simply pulling the attention of residents in their 40s and 50s away from at-large community service efforts and organizations like the Kiwanis Club and La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses, groups that saw much healthier enrollment in previous decades.

“I personally think a lot of the younger families are just so busy,” said Chuck Terhune, 66, vice president of the La Cañada Noon Kiwanis and president of the La Cañada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Assn. “There’s so much going on in this big urban area. (And) a lot of people give by donating money, but I think there’s less of a tendency to give service with your hands-on personal service.”

Despite the loss of members through attrition, the workload and commitments are the same so people are doing as much as they ever did with fewer human resources.

“I think it’s a problem in all service clubs,” said Rosemary Hook, 80, president of the Friends of the La Cañada Flintridge Library and member of the La Cañada Kiwanis AM club. “There’s no time. And the kids too, look how busy they are. And their parents are driving them all over the place. It’s just a changing of the guard — there was the Industrial Revolution and now we’re having an Electronic Revolution.”

Death by attrition

The Montrose-La Crescenta Kiwanis Club recently merged with La Cañada’s AM Kiwanis Club due to a sharp decline in its membership after 91 years of serving the community. The California-Nevada-Hawaii District of Kiwanis International reported 17 members in the last membership year and just 10 members in the current year.

Leaders at the club did not respond to requests for an interview, but AM Kiwanis member and director of community services Joe Thompson said its typical for groups to lose members as people age, move or simply leave.

“Just gradually people got tired and left the club,” he said of the Montrose-La Crescenta chapter. “If you can’t hold the meetings, people don’t want to come, and then you’re down to just a few people and at a certain level, the club disappears.”

By merging with the La Cañada’s AM Kiwanis Club, school programs such as the Crescenta Valley High School Key Club and the Rosemont Middle School Builders Club, not to mention many more youth programs, were able to be spared.

Members of the Noon Kiwanis Club, which has a current membership of about 100, are keenly looking at ways to get younger people involved. Their target audience are recent retirees like Mike Leininger, 65, a former La Cañada Unified School District official with several ties to the community.

The club’s president elect, he and other new members will be officially installed at the club’s annual dinner next Wednesday.

“One of my goals this year is to re-educate the town on all the things Kiwanis is doing,” said Leininger, who’s also active in the Tournament of Roses Assn., a group founded by Kiwanis in 1978. “Times change, needs change and we can’t be afraid to change.”

The group is beginning to reach out to students of La Cañada High School, where an engineering career pathway just started this school year. They hope to get young would-be engineers more directly involved with building next year’s Rose Parade float, one of the most physically demanding aspects of the Tournament.

“You put out a wide net, and you never know who you’re going to get,” Wallace said.

Belief in the future

Despite the looming specter of age and attrition, many members express a positive outlook on the future of La Cañada’s service organizations. Perhaps it stems from a sincere belief that truly good things will never really die.

“I have found there’s always somebody who takes over,” said a hopeful Hook. “I think enough seeds have been planted that they’ll grow again. You have to believe in people.”

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine