415. December 20, 1993: How Fire Victims Got Back To Normal Life in Oakland, CA

Photo of boy in Oakland's Diamond Park in April of 1989 by Lurene is not related to this story, but shows something about how children view life, relate their stories.

415.

Published news story by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, December 20, 1993, East Bay Journal, “Home for the holidays”. Story about how families in the East Bay hills were settling into rebuilt homes. Their former homes were destroyed in the 1991 conflagration.

Revisiting the story in 2009, I am reminded of two things. First, I think there was an editing mistake which we were able to acknowledge and correct. We depict/identify Joanna Piper, 11, as before Hanukah candles in photo, but in the story, the young girl is quoted discussing Christmas. I vaguely remember the family calling editor Robert Bruce about the issue. They were not angry, though. They thought it was an innocent mistake at the cutting/editing table and considered it a cool tale for neighborhood friends, all of whom were recovering from the devastating fire. Mr. Bruce ran a correction in the following issue.

The second thing I think of is how children must be delicately interviewed. The journalist must (try to) use the usual rules of strict accuracy, but simultaneously remember the subject of the interview is just an excited kid.

In this case, I had before me pre-teens who were one minute discussing their lost cats and goldfish, and in the next describing in astonishing detail the loss of the entire home to a devastating fire. These kids mentioned the stays with relatives, the weird, meandering trips to Europe. They were essentially homeless, if only for two years.

Kids are interesting to interview after natural disasters, or in/about unresolved wars. I think the journalist has to listen carefully, let the child talk freely about what he/she remembers.

I don’t think you should suggest quotes to a child. It twists the story. Either use the kid’s words or do not. “If in doubt, leave it out,” as the old newsroom saying advises. This really applies to work with children.

Sometimes that will be the lost rabbit, sometimes the odd experience of homelessness. The thing is, the youngsters are still putting it together in their minds:

As the fire approached on Oct. 20, 1991, Abigail and Hannah’s father, Robert, handed each of them a box and told them to gather all they felt they could not do without in 15 minutes. They had to evacuate.

Abigail said she did not think he was serious, but packed anyway. She saved her toe-shoes from years of ballet. As they walked away, their father told her to take one last look at the house. “I thought he was being melodramatic,” she admitted.

After the fire destroyed their home, they moved several times — first to Lafayette with relatives, then to a rental house in the Adam’s Point neighborhood of Oakland.

Next, the family spent a year living in a 500 square foot apartment in London while Robert was on sabbatical from UC Berkeley.

“I couldn’t just forget about it,” Abigail said, later realizing that being in England distanced the family from the disaster.

While Abigail is a social butterfly, dancer and has a new driver’s permit, Hannah is studious in her behavior, quiet and prone to reading and spending time alone.

“The part of Christmas I’ve always loved is when it rains. I used to sit under the tree and watch it rain … I’ve missed that for the last two years,” said Hannah.

Check out my other blogs:

bayarealurene.blogspot
fecklesspreapproved.blogspot
unbelievableanimalstories.blogspot
baghdadiproposal.blogspot
risksinreporting.blogspot
nightclubman.blogspot
genesisoutline.blogspot
blackholeeconomics.blogspot

THANKS TO FORMER "HAPPY DAYS" WRITER NANCY CHURNIN DEMAC IN 1985

Photo of Reno Air Races by Lloyd Francis, 1984; The Spectator, pics of June 7, 1985 issue


433.

Published editorial by Editor-in-Chief Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, June 7, 1985, “Farewell Mrs. Demac, Sad To See You Go.” Editorial about friendly resignation of faculty advisor to journalism students at campus newspaper, Nancy Churnin Demac.

Before working in our journalism department, she was working as a writer for the hit television show Happy Days, which ran from 1974 to 1984 on the ABC television network. She would occasionally remind us of the importance of ethics in journalism by using Happy Days character Richie Cunningham, who was played by actor/film director/producer Ron Howard.

It's nearly amusing today to notice how little we saw of the coming changes to media, publishing. I had a cool student staff working with me, including Chris Dear. Editorial running alongside mine by Art Editor Dear questioned the increasing modernization/computerization of college exams in 1985, the growing involvement of IBM. The writer was afraid teaching, thus understanding, would ultimately be truncated to satisfy the dictates of an abbreviated world. "The Ultimate in a Sterile Education; The Scantron Revolution".

Reviewing the editorial by Chris Dear on October 12, 2009, I think the points remain reasonable. At Chabot Community College, I had to study Dante, Chaucer, Socrates, and Plato. I had to outline the book of Genesis. I was forced to correct every factual and punctuation error by my professors. Today, I am not sure students are pressured to digest these ideas or appreciate them to the extent I was in community college.

Check out my other blogs:

bayarealurene.blogspot
fecklesspreapproved.blogspot
unbelievableanimalstories.blogspot
baghdadiproposal.blogspot
risksinreporting.blogspot
nightclubman.blogspot
genesisoutline.blogspot.com
blackholeeconomics.blogspot

COLLEGE POLITICS OF 1984-1985, UNWELCOME MEMORIES OF 1978 PEOPLE'S TEMPLE MURDERS FOR SF BAY AREA, JOURNALISTS

1, Jackson in San Francisco for 1984 Democratic Convention. I attended that convention as student observer. Photo by Lloyd Francis; 2, July 15, 1984 at Moscone Center, Democratic Convention rally for Marijuana rights, Photo by Howard Ford.

427.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, May 10, 1984. “ASCC Seeks New Liaison,” “Gwilliam Turns Down Stipends,” “Meet Chabot’s Ronald Graham”.

428.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, March 9, 1984. “Up, Up and Away…”. Story is about Chabot’s forensics team.

429.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, March 16, 1984. “Marketing Team Wins Awards,” “ Aguiar For The Defense”.

430.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, April 26, 1984. “Polls Close Tonight For ASCC Election,” “It’s Official: Escobar’s Eligible”. It was an average newspaper for a community college, but in 2009, I can recognize the outlines of future news events.

You had three students running for 1984 student government. Ray Gwilliam, Eddie Escobar and Michael Faryabi. Even then, you were scratching your head when candidate/incumbent Michael Faryabi kept calling actions of the student government “illegal.”

Illegal? Nobody quite knew what Faryabi was ranting about. Today, you very easily do: maybe the governments of Iran and/or Afghanistan.

You recognize in these old speeches a clear rehearsal for Mideast/Islamic diplomatic rhetoric that is common today for diplomats out of Iran, Afghanistan and Israel’s West Bank/Gaza Strip. This style of activism – assuming a minor political position in the U.S. simply to gain a podium and promote an unrelated cause -- became more pronounced by Palestinian sympathizers on many U.S. campuses by 1988.

It’s now used all the time in 2009. You’ll see a group promoting pediatric health, but they’re always stuck on Palestinian kids’ health, somehow, and since they’re on that subject, how about Palestinian rights in general....

But the observer needs to step back, consider the general background of the activist. I doubt this obfuscatory style of political activism was invented by Islamic immigrants. I think it’s probably a style used by people coming from non-democratic, authoritarian countries in general. I could be wrong from one case to another, but I can’t help putting it together this way while revisiting this 1984 story in 2009. I think it was the public speaking style of the era for many Afghans in the East Bay. They were thinking still of the Soviet invasion.

In Iran, for example, one would have a hard time starting a club advancing women’s rights, per se. Let’s face it: makes more sense to start a knitting club in Tehran and spend the entire afternoon – yarn openly displayed – discussing rights in Islam relating to….knitting. The women return home in safety. Nobody gets jailed the next day.

431.

Published news stories by Lurene Helzer, The Chabot College Spectator, May 17, 1984. “Marketing Team Walks Away With Medals”. What stands out about this issue of the campus newspaper is not my story, but that Jesse Jackson was on the front page, preparing to make a run for the U.S. presidency.

Student Journalist Catherine Kellam wrote a story about Jackson’s speech at SF State. Jackson is quoted in her story promoting friendlier relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan was then U.S. president.

Jackson was one of many in those late years of the Cold War who favored a friendlier stance toward Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union was in 1984 led by Konstantin Chernenko. With this leader, the Soviets, in retaliation for earlier U.S. actions, boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, encouraged increased KGB oppression on political dissidents in the Soviet sphere, and forged ahead with a useless conflict inside Afghanistan. (We are in Afghanistan today, by the way, having about as hard a time in that tribal society, so....)

Jackson, like so many with the left in those years, had major blind spots when it came to recognizing the Soviets as they truly were inside Eastern Europe and Russia. After the fall of The Berlin Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet-led dictatorships, critics like Jackson seemed a bit reluctant to revisit their earlier positions regarding the Soviets.

This is a key point today because there are as many or more nuclear weapons now as there were then. Activists like Jackson seem far less vocal about nuclear weapons today than they were in the 1980s. The holders of nuclear weaponry today seem far less politically stable, rational, than were the dictatorial Soviets of 1984.

432.

News stories for Chabot College Spectator between May, 1984 and June, 1985. Or, these are the copies I still have. I was editor of the campus newspaper by June of 1985.

In that 1985 issue, I wrote a longer story about journalism, and about the 1978 Jonestown murders by Jim Jones. San Francisco Photojournalist Greg Robinson, working for The San Francisco Examiner, was killed, as were many others.....to be continued.

Cigarettes, Jerusalem, October 2000

H.D. photo of field in India, date unknown.

426.

Unpublished poem by Lurene Helzer, October 21, 2002, “Cigarettes, 1, Jerusalem, October, 2000.” I must have written this about someone I met in Jerusalem as I was thinking about my own struggles to quit smoking. I had quit, restarted, quit for good a year later. Outside that, I am not sure what prompted the writing of this dismal poem:

I saw bones. Bones of the near future.

She would never lie, all crushed innocence, in a mass grave in Europe. She would not disintegrate against the awful force of an explosion at high noon. She would not suffer….she wrote her meaning in white chalk, in white smoke…

425: HE FLED NAZIS, LOST BOTH PARENTS, ESCAPED COMMUNISTS AND THEN -- AFTER SURVIVING ALL THAT -- ARRIVED IN U.S. AND VOLUNTEERED FOR VIETNAM WAR

Photo from Vietnam War 1968 from siue.edu website

425.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, September 24, 1987, El Cerrito Journal, “EC physical therapy clinic stresses the human touch”. This is one of those short news stories that, for a small newspaper, define the real job.

You are trying to let residents of the area know what’s around them, where they can spend their dollars.

In this case, we were talking about a small business on San Pablo Avenue owned and operated by a Polish couple, Gregory and Helena Gorecki. This was a unique story. It’s not the kind of immigrant family we hear enough about. This incredible family had fled Poland in terror. Mr. Gorecki truly arrived in – and remained in -- the United States the harder way by choice:

After living through the Nazi occupation of Poland and losing both of his parents, he fled the country during the late Sixties by hopping a train bound for Vienna, Austria.

“I was not easily admitted to the United States,” Gorecki remembers. But he said he hated the communist government of Poland so much that when he was finally admitted to the United States in the last years of the 1960s, he volunteered to fight communists in Vietnam.

422-424: STEELE RESIGNS, BUSES FOR BERKELEY STUDENTS, JULIE JORGENSEN'S 1987 BABY NEWS

Berkeley view from above; UC Berkeley students in 2005 with campus Republican club who might have used AC Transit for transportation. First photo on MRE Commercial Real Estate website, Second photo was posted on a UC Berkeley Campus Republican website.


422.

Published news brief by Lurene Kathleen Helzer, East Bay Journal, May 16, 1994, Berkeley’s school superintendent retires”. This small item regards retirement of Berkeley’s LaVonia Steele. There were previous stories about her plans to retire, so this mention was just a courtesy for local readers.

423.

Published news story by Lurene Helzer, Berkeley Daily Planet, April 26, 1999, “Cal students OK transit ‘class pass’”. This public transportation plan was enthusiastically viewed by both University of California at Berkeley students, and Berkeley’s city council members:

The program will be funded through student fees. The students had to approve the fees, however, through their student elections, which were held last week on campus.

“It is not easy to vote to tax yourself on something that benefits the larger community. The students stepped right up to do that. Very impressive,” said Armstrong.

The pass will be available for purchase in the fall semester on campus. Students will be able to use the passes not only for AC Transit rides around the East Bay and into San Francisco, but also for free rides on the campus shuttle.

“I hope this will encourage students to ride the shuttle, particularly in the evening, even for short distances, because I think this could be a significant crime deterrent,” Armstrong said.

Berkeley police have said that Berkeley’s image as a pedestrian city has sometimes attracted criminals who are looking for easy robbery targets, particularly at night. Students are particularly vulnerable.



Photo of Oakland neighborhood where we all lived in 1987 from Flickr.

424.

Unpublished essay for unborn baby by Lurene Helzer, May 18, 1987, untitled essay about how Julie Jorgensen of Oakland, CA, told her boyfriend, Rob, of her pregnancy.

I had dated Rob’s handsome cousin, Doug, a few times. I think he lived in Fremont or Union City. We had nothing in common, but he had the good manners, wonderful looks. That’s about as deep as my dating got in 1987, I must admit. Doug was clearly the more gracious, the more steady, of us. I have fond memories of him in 2009.

Those were good days in 1987 Oakland. Julie and her family, friends, were neighbors and friends. I write this essay to baby we’d just learned was forming in Julie’s belly:

He thought it was great and miraculous. He started to make predictions about the next nine months. He said she would probably be moody.

He seemed to know more about being pregnant than Julie did. He was the kind of guy who wouldn’t complain if she wanted something weird like pickled sardines dipped in chocolate at 2:36 a.m. on a rainy Sunday night. He’d find a way of getting them, even if he had to hop on his bad ankle all the way.

Rob didn’t want anyone to know. But when he took her out to dinner, she said he told four or five waitresses. Then she told me. Over a game of pool and a Budweiser, Rob told Doug. Julie told me I could tell Lloyd. I told Lloyd. Rob also told a few select family members.

But remember, said Rob as he was getting out of Doug’s truck, “it’s a secret.”

As long as no one read that week’s issue of NEWSWEEK, I figured it would stay that way.

421. The Nightclub Man 1997 - 1999 San Francisco. Memories of Prague.

Photo of 1968 Prague from "a world town in" site.

421.

Unpublished book or memoir by Lurene K. Helzer, final draft dated December 1999, The Nightclub Man. It was written in installments between November 1997 and 1999. The memoir is about Czechs in 1997 San Francisco.

When I read this small memoir today, one of the things I can’t help tripping over again and again is the complete social devastation that Russian communism wrought for the 20th Century, as was evident with the social relationships of 1997 Czechs I then met. The ruin of Soviet-dictated communism.

These are only the opening paragraphs. I am still entering manuscript into 2009 computer. I use fictional names for story:

He watched her through the blurred glass as she toed carefully along the puddle studded street toward his bus. The color of the sky was ashen, the gusts vengeful, whipping everything in sight like a powerful, lawless hand. He narrowed his eyes. He was sure he had seen her before. Tonight, he thought, in her black skirt, red turtleneck, and weary eyes, she looked as if she had just returned from a far-off land that had altered her sense of time badly.

The driver, smiling steadily, was a tall, trim, smartly handsome black man. He liked his job, and thought he could read people. The last passenger boarded, and the driver moved the bus west on Sacramento Street.

“It’s Friday, November 21, 1997, 5:13 p.m.,” he announced. His voice was velvet and calm, but authoritative, as a jazz station announcer. “The Dow closed up 23 points today at 7.881.10, gold is hovering just above $300 an ounce, and the NASDAQ lost 15 points to 1,620.75.”

One man, wearing a well-cut navy blue suit and red, paisley tie, looked up from his half-soaked Wall Street Journal with mild irritation. A red-haired woman in a white wool pantsuit and running shoes laughed.

“I’ve seen this guy before,” she said to the confused woman in the seat behind her. “He always has his numbers right, too. Listens to the news right before his shift starts.”

“The forecast calls for rain,” he continued. “It’s going to rain all night. It’s going to rain tomorrow. On Sunday, it’s going to rain. And on Monday, it’s going to rain some more. It is 48 degrees Fahrenheit in San Francisco with occasional gusts. Tonight’s word:” he lowered his voice to a thunder-like tone and said, with perfect Spanish pronunciation. “El Nino.”