As work resumed Tuesday on the Cingular cell tower Tuesday at 319 Mt. Holyoke after the company’s voluntary stay, residents continued their effort to halt the project, which they say is too imposing and unsightly for a neighborhood. The antenna and attendant equipment are attached to an existing utility pole under an operating agreement which allows mobile cell companies to piggyback on an existing telephone pole in an administrative procedure that provides no regulatory restraints. Unhappy with this ‘loophole for cellular companies,’ Mt. Holyoke residents have appealed to the City of L.A. and the Palisades Community Council to support their fight. Last Friday, Art Navarro, Cellular’s public relations officer for greater Los Angeles, told Mt. Holyoke resident Andy Dintenfass that ‘the company’s intent was to move it and that Cingular was looking into five other locations.’ The Verizon installer who was working at the Mt. Holyoke site, near the bluffs, told Dintenfass that ‘the size and five-mile range of the Mt. Holyoke installation is unusual for a neighborhood; they’re mostly found along highways.’ Meanwhile, Cris Armenta, lawyer for the homeowners, researched the law governing these installations within the Coastal Commission jurisdiction and discovered that Cingular had ignored the commission’s regulations. According to Pam Emerson, supervisor for regulation and enforcement for the L. A. County Coastal Commission, the commission allows a category exclusion for additions to an existing public utility structure unless the company adds more than 10 percent to the height or bulk of the tower. If the limit is exceeded the company can petition the commission for an exclusion. ‘In this case we could find no evidence that they [Cingular] had come to us or written a letter,’ Emerson told the Post. ‘If they write us a letter, I would then refer it to our enforcement person, who would investigate the size and scope of the project. Even if we eventually disagreed with the placement of the equipment, they could unbolt it and carry it to somewhere else.’ Although the opponents have characterized the antenna apparatus as ‘large and ugly, an aesthetic and emotional encroachment,’ the proliferation of similar cellular sites continues. Palisadian Lisa Deni told the Post this week that several months ago ‘Cingular installed a large suitcase-sized box to a power pole’ on her property on Las Pulgas Rd above Sunset. ‘Then came the power meter with its own address and the cooling fan that hums 24/7, which can be heard from the backyard.’ ( See Letter to the Editor, page 2.) With the desire for improved cell phone coverage increasing, the challenge to balance ever-changing technology with the beauty and integrity of neighborhoods will continue. ‘Just because the cellular companies are under tremendous market pressure from their consumers to provide a seamless network of cell sites quickly,’ attorney Armenta said, ‘that doesn’t mean that they can ignore the legitimate concerns of the residents, the jurisdiction of the Coastal Commission and their obligation to protect and preserve the California coastline.’

The organizing committee for this year’s Fourth of July parade met Monday evening at Mort’s Oak Room, and sent the call out for more donations and more volunteer workers the day of the big event. ‘We have to raise at least $65,000 this year just to break even,’ said PAPA president Bobbie Farberow, owner of Mort’s Deli. ‘We’re well short of that goal, with less than a month to go, so I hope people will step up and provide financial support.’ (See the first installment of Parade Donors on page 6. Checks made out to the Palisades Americanism Parade Association can be sent to PAPA at P.O. Box 1776, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.) Board member Rob Weber came up with a new fundraising idea this year, thanks to cooperation from Gelson’s. The Palisades market has given PAPA permission to place ‘Support July 4th Parade and Fireworks’ donation boards at each checkout stand, beginning this week. These boards hold three coupons’$2 (red), $5 (white) and $10 (blue)’that can simply be torn off and handed to the cashier. The selected donation will then be added to one’s grocery bill. ‘One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to the parade,’ said Weber, an attorney who has lived in the Palisades with his wife, Karyn, just three years. o o o Meanwhile, PAPA People, the organization of volunteers that works to insure that the parade works smoothly, needs more volunteers. Those interested are encouraged to attend a PAPA People meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in Mort’s Oak Room on Swarthmore. ‘Our parade is run strictly by volunteers in the community,’ said member Carolyn Haselkorn, who suggested some ways in which people can help out the day of the parade: provide traffic control on designated streets between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m., provide traffic control at the end of the parade at the entrance to the Palisades Recreation Center, help at Ralphs’ parking lot at 8 a.m., and work at the VIP parking lot at the Washington Mutual corner between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Please call Haselkorn at 454-0154 or Hoppy Mehterian at 573-9331 if you can help, or simply come to tonight’s meeting.

Roberta Donohue, longtime publisher of the Palisadian-Post, former Chamber of Commerce president and town booster has been named the Mort Farberow Businessperson of the Year, in honor of the late deli owner and godfather of the Palisades. ”Embedded in the town since her childhood, Donohue exemplifies the three C’s that underlie the Farberow award: Community, Chamber and Children. ”It is not surprising that Roberta developed her love for the town through community service and support. Her father, Rocco Ross, owned the local Mobil station and lent his time, money and leadership to community activities. ”Suspending her business school studies in order to care for her ailing mother, Roberta found her first part-time job as a typesetter at the Palisadian-Post in 1972, and stayed to make a career. ”’How right they were when they told me that once newspaper ink gets into your blood, it never leaves you,’ Roberta said in an interview. ”While her professional life was developing, Roberta took on more duties at the newspaper, mastering not only the printing business, but also the administrative side, and eventually was promoted to publisher in 1987. ”Along the way, she married Richard Donohue, and the couple became parents in 1990. Roberta, patterning after her own father, has always managed to integrate family with work, and her daughter Jennifer, now 15, found love and companionship at the Post. From the nursing days right up to the present, Jennifer has been a welcome member of the newspaper family. Now completing her freshman year at Palisades High School, Jennifer played JV volleyball and played violin with the school orchestra. ”Indeed, Roberta’s activities with both the Chamber of Commerce and other nonprofit organizations have focused primarily on promoting family and community. She has co-chaired the Chamber’s Village Fair, Santa’s visit and the Auto Show. And she has worked prodigiously with Las Doradas, serving as a patron for the organization that supports a preschool and child center in Venice ”’My focus has always been to make sure that the Chamber events be family oriented, that kids were encouraged to participate,’ Donohue said. ‘I remember that when my dad was involved in the Optimist Club; we kids loved the carnivals and fireworks sponsored by the club at the Recreation Center. ”In her term as Chamber president in 2000, Roberta expanded the notion of the Village Fair (formerly Moonlight Madness) to include young kids, and for the past 20 years has been a loyal elf assisting Santa on his annual visit to Swarthmore. ”’Mort and I both loved the Holiday Ho! Ho! Ho! We believed in the spirit of Santa because it brought such a fun time for children.’ ”Friendly, open and encouraging to young people, Roberta is a frequent speaker at career days at local public schools, and an accommodating host to young people who want to learn about the newspaper business. ”Roberta first worked with Mort in 1987 when she became Post publisher. ‘He reminded me a lot of my dad, who had passed away,’ she said. ‘They both believed in the values of hard work and giving young people a chance. My dad came to America at 15 and he understood how hard it was to get started in this country.’ ”The last time Roberta had a long conversation with Mort was in the summer of 2002. ‘He and Bobbie (his wife) and I were at a board planning meeting. After the meeting, we sat around and talked about the old times and the values that we shared.’ ”Donohue will be honored next Thursday, June 23 at the annual Chamber of Commerce Installation Dinner at the Riviera Country Club.

By WENDY HAMACHER Special to the Palisadian-Post Marquez Charter Elementary School celebrated its 50th birthday on June 5, and in true Palisades fashion hosted a party that attracted students, parents, alumni and neighbors to a day of festivities and nostalgia. ”Around town, it’s no secret that Marquez is a high-achieving school with its innovative teachers and bright students, not to mention loyal community support, but imagine being a student from one of the first graduating classes reliving old memories from the 1950s? ”That was the tale of the day when a small group of students from the Class of ’59 gathered around old school photos of classmates and teachers. Naturally, their memories of childhood at Marquez are fond ones, and to some it was like going back in time. ” ‘It’s amazing how little the school has really changed,’ said Tom Betts, the man responsible for gathering up the old gang, who this spring has also been coordinating the upcoming Class of ’65 reunion at Palisades High. ‘Looking at the overall footprint of this school, it’s the same as it was when it opened.’ ”Betts, along with other Class of ’59 students like Suzanne Thomas, Pam Wilkes and Mark Matthews, exchanged hugs and laughter while looking at some of the old class photos. ”’This teacher right here in this photo, Miss Lillig, seems to be a teacher all of us remember,’ Betts said. ‘She was one of those who was definitely in command of the classroom. We may have been a bunch of cut-ups, but nobody fooled around in her class.’ ”’She was remarkable,’ said Suzanne Thomas. ‘She was a very strong teacher.’ ” Mark Matthews recalled the first time he ever heard a student, who happened to be one of his best friends at the time, talk back to a teacher (certainly not Miss Lillig). ”’My old friend Greg Braunger, he’s now deceased but during recess he told the art teacher to ‘go to hell.’ I tell ya I’ll never forget that.’ ”Other ’59 classmates who showed up for a reunion photograph included Marion Imhoff Foster, Kathy Thomas Perez, Suzanne Thomas, Emmet Acterman, Stuart Borden, Dave Bennett, John Lawton, Lyle Harper and Andrew Bokelman. ”They were second graders when Marquez opened in 1955, some of them transferring from Palisades Elementary as new school boundaries split the community in half. Houses were popping up all over town, especially in the Marquez Knolls area, and the post-World War II baby boom was hitting the schools. ” The alumni said they felt fortunate to have attended a school that brought parents, teachers and students together as a family. ”’It was the opportunities we were afforded and it was a magnet even when it opened up,’ Betts said. ‘The teachers were the cream of the crop.’ ”Marion Heller taught at Marquez for 37 years and recalls being welcomed with open arms when she started in 1965. ‘It was so wonderful, just wonderful’the best move I ever made,’ she said. She still keeps track of many of her students and is pleased when they come back to the Palisades to raise their families. ”’To see the kids grow up and then to see their kids, you know, it’s just the neatest thing.’

A news reporter’s job is to get the facts’and friends, contacts and even enemies, all of whom can be sources, help a good reporter in this pursuit. So says Palisadian Ed Guthman, a man whose career has spanned five decades, including his rookie years at the Seattle Times in the 1940s, his stint as special assistant for public information in Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department in the ’60s, a dozen years as national editor at the L.A. Times, and now a journalism professor at USC. ”The quality and caliber of sources was on Guthman’s mind this week as the identity of the infamous ‘Deep Throat,’ who was invaluable to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s investigation of the Watergate cover-up, was revealed to be Mark Felt, a man whom Guthman knew while he was at the Justice Department. ”’I remember Felt as one of the senior FBI people,’ Guthman recalls, not at all surprised that he had been a willing source. ‘He had a relationship with Woodward, Hoover had died, and the president brought in someone from outside the department (L. Patrick Gray) instead of tapping Felt, who was the number-two guy. He was pissed off, he saw what was going on in the Nixon Administration, and told the reporter. It’s not unusual at all.’ ”Indeed, it’s not unusual for reporters to get information from all sorts of people, Guthman says. ‘People begin to trust you, and they’ll tell you a lot.’ ”The reasons vary, but Guthman maintains that, ultimately, the record of the facts speak for themselves. ”While now, at 85, Guthman is the sage’dispensing a career’s worth of experience to his students at USC’he was once callow. He offers examples of some of his sources, angels and devils. ”Early in his career at the Seattle Times, he was assisted by a man whose identity he never revealed to anyone: not to his editors, not even to his wife. The story involved the head of the Western Conference of the Teamsters Union, who was suspected of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars of union funds. ” In the course of the investigation, working with the Times labor reporter, Guthman also discovered that the Teamster official who was handling the health and welfare pension had been collecting ‘a very large’ commission. ”’We wrote the story,’ Guthman said, ‘and then I did something that I had never done before, and never did again. I told the [pension] guy that I had the story and asked if he’d like to read it before I ran it. He said ‘Yes,’ so I went over to his office and gave him the story. He read it, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. ‘Go ahead and print it, you sonofabitch,’ he said. ‘It’s all true.’ This guy became a source.’ ”Sources can also be corrupted, Guthman discovered early on. Again, in Seattle, the newly elected mayor had beaten the finance director. ‘The finance director turned over to me the finance report,’ Guthman says. ‘But before I could investigate further, the mayor paid off my source and he disappeared. It was a great lesson to me, but I had to learn it the hard way. It never occurred to me that I would lose my source.’ ”Throughout his career, Guthman says he has learned much, some by his mistakes, but much from a host of professionals and mentors, who instructed him in the qualities of good journalism: integrity, truth and common sense. ”While a senior at the University of Washington, Guthman worked nights collecting sports statistics for the morning’s news. In July 1941, he entered the Army and when he came back to the Times in 1945 his old boss Cliff Harrison, who had since become the editor-in-chief, asked him what he wanted to do. ”’I was just as glad to have my old job back, but Mr. Harrison said, ‘You could be a real reporter; you’re going to the courthouse. In six months, I want to know what’s going on behind every door.’ It turned out that the county clerk, Robert Morris, was a highly regarded referee, even refereeing Rose Bowl games, and my track meets in high school. He remembered me and took my hand and said ‘I’m going to show you all the public records that are down there.” ”Probably one of Guthman’s most inspiring mentors was Robert Kennedy, whom he assisted at the Justice Department and with his campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1964. ”Although Kennedy asked Guthman to stay on as his press secretary, he turned Kennedy down, acknowledging his true commitment. ‘I felt I was a reporter and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in politics,’ he says. ‘So he gave me some advice that helped me with the next step in my career. He said, ‘Go to anybody you respect, and they’ll be happy to spare a half-hour to give you advice for your future.’ So I talked to people I knew who I thought had good judgment: a number of friends at the Justice Department, the CEO at IBM, where I was offered a job in PR, Norman Lear’and I talked to Otis Chandler, who at that time, 1965, wanted to beef up the L.A. Times’ national bureau and asked me to be editor.’ ”While at the Times (1965-1977) Guthman realized first-hand how Watergate was really the loose end of a ball of yarn that would unravel into the nation’s most astonishing story of corruption. ”’At the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami, I was there with my staff covering for the L.A. Times,’ Guthman says. ‘We saw security around Bob Haldeman and John Erlichman we’d never seen before and we couldn’t understand why. Our reporter John Lawrence was scheduled to interview Haldeman and was waiting in the hotel lobby. He went up to the desk and asked the clerk where the men’s room was. The clerk asked him to wait, whereupon an armed guard came up to escort Lawrence to the bathroom. We couldn’t figure it out; finally we decided if anything was the cause, it was Watergate, so we decided to investigate.’ ”Then, perhaps the most felicitous series of coincidences produced class-A sources, who assisted the Times in being the first newspaper to file stories on Watergate. Reporter Jack Nelson interviewed the lookout guy, who had been across the street from the Watergate Hotel during the break-in, and investigative reporter Robert Jackson managed to get the whole story from John McCord, the leader of the Watergate burglars, whose daughter, it turned out, attended the same school for the deaf as did McCord’s daughter, so the two men were friends. ”Although a joint news service agreement with the Washington Post resulted in the Times not getting front-page credit, Guthman says ‘They [the Post] did what we would have done.’ ”Surveying the journalistic landscape these days, Guthman stands firm that thorough investigation and fact-checking must remain the standard. ”’Television and the Internet have changed things a lot, but you still have to do regular, intensive checking,’ Guthman says. ‘The first five weeks of my investigative reporting class are involved in asking the students to find out where the public records are. But what I find is that large numbers of the students are getting the information off the Internet. It’s great, it saves time, but I tell them that you’ve got to get the original documents. I try to explain to them that documents disappear; you have to have them certified. ”’A student came up to me recently and said ‘I can’t find anything about this on the Internet.’ ‘Come with me,’ I said, as we walked across campus. She asked ‘Where are we going?’ I said, ‘the library,’ and wondered if she had ever been inside the library. What’s going to happen when they get something off Google and they’re going to be wrong?’

Career events at elementary schools provide a valuable tool for young children to learn about the different jobs they can pursue later in life. Often, though, the speakers tend to represent jobs children are already aware of such as doctor, lawyer, accountant and fireman. ”This year’s Career Week at Marquez Charter Elementary was different, allowing students to get up close and personal with representatives of other types of professions, including a dairy worker, a paleontologist, a movie stuntman, and a pair of movie writer/producers. ”The event’s non-human superstar was Clarabell, a 1,600-pound dairy cow who came as a representative of the Dairy Council of California. The instructor, Efrain Valenzuela, wowed the students with a milking demonstration, and taught useful tidbits about a cow ‘s body and explained to the students where their breakfast milk and yogurt comes from. ”’Our objective is to teach the kids what happens from cow to container,’ Valenzuela told the Palisadian-Post. The students learned about the eating habits of the cows, and were impressed to learn that a single cow can produce 10 to 15 gallon of milk per day. ”Another hit with the students was Mario Perez, a professional stuntman who has worked in video games such as ‘Devil May Cry’ and ‘Matrix: Online’ and films like ‘Master and Commander on the Far Side of the World.’ He did many of the sword-fighting stunts in the film, and estimates that he was killed ‘about seven or eight times.’ ”Perez brought up several students and involved them in fake fights in which the student would mimic punching or kicking and he would perform various flips, jumps and rolls. He then did several demonstrations with swords from the same batch made for ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’ ”Doug Goodrow, a bone preparator from the Natural History Museum, talked about a dig he had been working on in Montana where they uncovered a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton that was about 70 percent intact. He showed slides of the dig site and explained how dinosaur fossils are found and excavated. He also displayed a map showing the distribution of the fossils at the site, along with a plaster cast and model of a Tyrannosaurus Rex tooth. ”Palisadians Keith and Juliet Giglio, a husband-and-wife team, gave a presentation about writing movies and what it’s like to be on a set. The Giglios wrote and produced the Disney film ‘A Cinderella Story’ and were contributing writers for the animated film ‘Tarzan.’ They explained what it was like seeing their scripts get fleshed out on film, and encouraged the students to pursue a career in writing. ”Writing movies ‘is all all about imagination,’ said Keith Giglio. ‘I get to be a kid every day.’ ”Career Week was coordinated by Rosario Sindel, a parent at Marquez and an attorney with Unocal. Among her other speakers were Palisadians and school parents John Salwitz, a video game designer who founded Electronic Arts; Denise Moss, a writer/producer for ‘All Grown Up’ on Nickelodeon; and professional musician Charlie Bisharet, who appears regularly on ‘American Idol.’ He played his electric violin for the students.