WestchesterParents

Annoyed with the high density housing being forced into our community and the increasing traffic gridlock? Tired of streets and sidewalks in disrepair or double digit increases in water rates while the DWP admits that it has hundreds of millions of excess dollars!  Is your personal checking account getting raided by the city, time after time with back to back increases in trash collection fees?

Tired of elected officials failing to respect the needs of our community and treating you with respect?

Here is your opportunity to give City Hall a good S.L.A.P!

Ron Kaye, former editor of the Daily News is organizing something big that all of us could rally around.

At noon Monday, July 14, Bastille Day, We, the people who care about the future of Los Angeles, are coming together on the South Lawn of City Hall to protest the failure of our elected officials respect the needs of our communities and treat us with respect.

This is actually much more than a protest. It is the launching of our concerned citizens coalition that is intended to bring neighborhood councils, service clubs, residents groups, business groups, churches and activists of all types together. Our plan is to form a third force in L.A. politics that will have a unified seat at the table of power with the unions and the developers-contractors-lobbyists. We all have different neighborhood issues and we might not always agree on everything our city, as a whole, needs. But, we can support each other in our individual goals. We can spark public conversation that will lead to faster progress in solving our problems in order to help create a greater L.A.

The operating name of the group is the “Saving L.A. Project” or S.L.A.P. and the theme protest is “Take Back Los Angeles — Demand A Great City.” I’ve been writing extensively about local politics, and the July 14 rally, ever since I retired two months ago as Editor of the Daily News. I have since met with dozens of community groups and I have learned a lot that has better informed my own views about what’s wrong with the way City Hall operates, and more importantly, how we fix it.

Thousands of people all over L.A., like you, have worked long and hard for years to make our neighborhoods better. I believe what’s needed is for all our groups to unite and develop an agenda for a great L.A., to bring the Spirit of L.A. back to life, a city with healthy neighborhoods, good schools, safer streets and less congestion. Our Neighborhood Councils are vital in achieving this.

During our rally we plan to put forward a “Contract for a Great Los Angeles,” that challenges our officials to sign and commit themselves to a new way of doing business. We need your ideas for this!. We need your participation! We need the biggest crowd we can muster to send City Hall a message! A message that we are serious and we are going to go forward to build an organization that will change the politics of our city and offer hope to our apathetic, alienated and defeated residents.

The future of L.A. is in our hands! We have set up an email address for your responses. Please let us know if you want our printed flyers, if buses or other transportation is needed and what ideals you feel we need to emphasize, during our protest and in our future.

This is the first step in bringing real democracy to L.A., to truly empower our community, to make a difference in our lives now, and in our children’s lives in the future. I hope you will take a look at what I’ve been writing regarding our city on my blog, ronkayeLA.com. Please give me the feedback I need to help me understand what you see. I want to better articulate the frustration and desires of our people, who have already stepped forward and worked hard to make L.A. better.

Please share this information and the attached flyer with all members of your organizations. I would also appreciate it if you would post the flyer wherever it is appropriate. I am looking forward to hearing from you as soon as possible. For further information, and to respond, visit: www.ronkayela.com

Join the movement to save L.A.Sign up now.

Ron Kaye is the former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News where he spent 23 years helping to make the newspaper the voice of the San Fernando Valley and fighting for a city government that serves the people and not special interests.

Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC // Add Comment »

Tuesday night the education committee of the Neighborhood Council of Westchester/Playa is submitting a motion to the board that would ask the LMU/Westchester Family of Schools to adopt the successful Palisades Charter High School model of governance.

The Palisades model provides that an equal number of seats are allocated to teachers, parents and community members consisting of individuals who live or work within the geographic boundaries of the school.

Update - The motion was approved last night (7-1-2008) at the Neighborhood Council meeting.

Tags: OUR SCHOOLS // Add Comment »

Dear Mr. Rochelle,
You’ve been a part of this process almost from the beginning so you must be acutely aware of the fact that when this process began a year ago one of the very first goals we sought was to design a family of schools where the community would take an active part in the leadership and operations of the what was know then as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools or WPFS. In fact, early on we had a document that was floated to various community leaders around May 2007 asking them for changes, amendments and adding new elements. In the last version of the document that I have the Mission statement said:

“All students who attend the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools (WPFS) will receive a well-rounded education based on California state standards and taught by highly qualified teachers. The local community will govern the schools through an elected board of directors, composed of community members, faculty, school administrator, and parents, and will have autonomy in the areas of staffing, budget, facilities, curriculum, assessment, calendar and governance.”

The Vision statement went on to say that:

“The community will lead in the creation and operation of an independent District known as the Westchester/Playa Family of Schools District (WPFS).
WPFS will be an autonomous family of schools within the Westchester/Playa del Rey/Playa Vista/Windsor Hills area operated independently and outside the normal governance of the LAUSD. ” and that “WPFS will be a District that is a partnership of the community, parents, teachers and school administrators, LAUSD and Loyola Marymount University…”

Note the references to the community in both statements.

Shortly after we began putting together this document, the LMU/iDivision came in and assumed responsibility to set up meetings to discuss reform and the document was quickly abandoned or discarded. No problem with that.

However, a rather large shift took place right away when an exploratory committee was formed by the LMU/iDivision consisting of 16 people. 14 of them were affiliated with the LAUSD and only 2 were from the community.

After bringing up the point that the community was under-represented, we were told not to worry, it’s just a group of people to collect data, best practices and so forth.” But looking back, this was the point where the iDivision was beginning to distance itself from the community.

The exploratory committee was tasked to research and present a number of different school alternatives. They were to consider iDivision, independent charter, affiliated charters, and anything else that might come to mind. When the time came to reviewing what the participants had researched… both charter alternatives got their three minutes and then the entire focus was quickly pinned on the iDivision structure and what services it would provide.

Even after the momentum shifted to iDivision, there was no effort to put together a governing board of directors, never mind a community based governing board of directors to oversee the communities vision of a Westchester Family of Schools. Over the next year there would be many other examples of decisions being made without any representation by the community. The important decisions were being decided pretty much within the close confines of the LMU/iDivision/LAUSD/UTLA administrators.

iDivision elections are another example. The elections were completely centered on enrolled families and teachers with the community having no access to voting. The voting disenfranchised families with preschool kids, families of kids who would soon matriculate into middle school or high school, it disenfranchised members of the community who have no children but would like a say in their schools on such subjects such as curriculum, temporary bungalows or enrollment criteria for students permitting in.

After the elections and still without any oversight of a Westchester Family of Schools governing board, a new committee of volunteers called the Autonomy Exploratory Committee [really groups of people representing WHS, Orville, Westport and Kentwood] began visiting schools [Oakland, San Diego, Inglewood, Los Angeles] in various parts of the state to observe, document and compile a report of their operations and submit to the LMU/iDivision hierarchy. This report was released in May 2008.

More recently the LMU/iDivision hierarchy again made a decision to create a new LMU/iDivision position without a community based governing board. That position was the newly announced Director for Learning and Leadership. The position was filled again without any community participation.

Also, we have now been advised -after the fact- that Kathi Littman, the iDivision Director has been replaced by Garfield High School principal Omar del Cuedo, husband of local district 8 Superintendent Linda del Cuedo.

An administrator from Garfield doesn’t seem to bring the best practices into the iDivision given the schools 870+ dropouts per year at the school and its state ranking of a 1. [Perhaps Mayor Villaraigosa had a disproportionate amount of influence of this decision???  Welcome to politics!] We might as well have elevated WHS principal Anita Barner to the post.

Finally, to cap off my examples of community disenfranchisement, you said unwittingly or not said that the “design” of the schools will be “for the students in the seats today, not for the students that aren’t coming.” I can only assume that designing schools for the students in the seats today are an effort to mitigate the districts failure to bring students up to today’s standards and try to raise the API.

By commiting your “design” to this standard means that the LMU/iDivision heirarchy [of which you are now a part of] intends continue that effort and you are not looking forward to instituting a curriculum that families within the Westchester high school enrollment area find attractive enough for them and their children. Families that you deemed aren’t coming anyway. Designing schools specifically to provide intervention and improve a bottomed out state ranking is not a good idea. It will only perpetuate the low scores and make it impossible to achieve Superintendent Brewer’s expectations that iDivision schools deliver on their perceived promises. Promises saddled by LAUSD rules. The faster road to success would be to provide a curriculum that competes with schools ranking in the top 20% of the state, not the bottom 30%.

Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS, WESTCHESTER HS // Add Comment »

H. David Nahai, the General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is right up there in the stratosphere of water wasters. After being badgered by LA Sniper Alan Mittelstaedt, Nahai released an audit of his own water and power use at his Benedict Canyon home to the The Daily News.

Nahai’s water use exceeds the previous record holder of LA’s elected officials, the prolific water waster Rocky Delgadillo.

The average per person water consumption of LADWP customers is 56,576 gallons per year or 163,000 gallons for the average 3 person household.

• H. David Nahai (DWP General Manager) - 434,220
  (a staggering 310% times more than my household!!)
• Rocky Delgadillo (City attorney) - 423,368 gallons 
• Mayor Villaraigosa - 386,716 gallons 
• Jack Weiss - 254,320 gallons  
• Bill Rosendahl - 230,384 gallons
• Tony Cardenas - 219,912 gallons
• Greig Smith - 219,164 gallons 
• Dennis Zine - 194,480 gallons 
• Wendy Gruel - 190,740 gallons
• Jose Huizar - 142,120 gallons 
• Eric Garcetti - 88,264 gallons
• Janice Hahn - 83,776 gallons
• Bernard Parks - 35,156 gallons

Mayor Villaraigosa should be happy to hear that once Nahai goes through the twelve step program gets his water use under control,  the mayor and his planning commissioners will be able to entitle that water to downtown developers for another 8 housing units and keep us trapped in a cycle of perpetual water shortages.

Ron Kaye of RonKayeLA has this to say about the story on the DWP boss:

Like Nahai, I have low-flush toilets and I recirculate water in my pool and I have a low-energy, low water consuming washing machiine. Unlike him, I have other low energy appliances as well. You could fit five of my houses inside his so you can bet I don’t have anywhere near the amount of light bulbs or air conditioning use.

Here’s an idea: Instead of gouging the little people with endless rate hikes, what if we determine the average residential use of water and power and start charging people sharply higher rates when they go above that. And for people like Nahai maybe we should charge five to 10 times the average rate.

Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, WATER // Add Comment »

Equity Office Properties is proposing two new office buildings totaling 487,000 square feet and two residential building totalling 600 units. The office buildings, each 5 stories tall will be located on the empty lots just south of the freeway access at Howard Hughes Parkway. 

More worrisome however are the two residential projects being proposed in the same package that will be located on lots the north side that include 325 lease-units and 275 for-sale units totaling 600 residential units. The residential building at 6055 Center Drive is proposed to be 24 stories tall dwarfing the Entrada commercial building in height.

These projects will substantially impact traffic in the area that is already graded ‘F’ and also impact Los Angeles’s limited water resources. Each of these projects market themselves as meeting LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards but when the city housing resources already exceed sustainable limits, LEED is really a moot point.

Westchester/PdR and Playa Vista resident need to join with Culver City residents and enlist city leaders to kill or reduce substantially this proposal.  It’s hard to criticize Culver City for approving the Entrada when Culver City council members can quickly point to projects across the street in the City of Los Angeles that are equally as large.

The projects is certain to make traffic significantly worse at the intersections of Sepulveda and Centinela as well as Sepulveda and Howard Hughes Parkway. Another serious concern is whether the project will require that Airport Avenue be “punched through” relieve traffic demands on Sepulveda.

Both Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Councilman Bill Rosendahl lobbied to reduce the scope of the Entrada project. Clearly, they need to be consistent in their concerns for traffic and vote to severly reduce the scope of this proposal.

Tags: MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC, WATER // 1 Comment »

Today there were a pair of articles in the Los Angeles Times articles on education written by Mitchell Landsberg that were exceptional!

The first was a truly moving story of a former Harvard-Westlake teacher taking his skills into an inner-city school and not caving into adjusting to the public school culture, familiarities, or expectations. While some might argue it was a public charter, he was still confronted with the same challenges that teachers of other inner city public schools have.  He expected to raise the bar wherever he teaches.

The most noteworthy points in article for me were the following:

• Holmes bluntness. It reminds me of my kids math teacher at our parochial middle school who is just as hard nosed. It takes awhile for the kids to get on the same page but they are better prepared for high school when they get there.
• His insistence that students parse the words they write and the words that others use. Examples: analyzing a college application essay; Obama’s speeches.
• Typically the kids at View Park Preparatory had no training in classroom discipline. The differences in the way the kids from the two institutions react to a teacher leaving the classroom for a brief time. That says a lot about the preparation they -don’t- get in middle school and elementary.
• His comment: I wasn’t prepared for the students to be so far behind in their reading development. . . . We were reading “The Odyssey,” and within one or two days I knew we couldn’t move through it like we did at Harvard-Westlake. The article doesn’t say how Holmes solved it but I presumed he did.
• I learned something from the article as well. The tenets of persuasive writing “Claim, clarification, evidence and warrant, cemented by backtracking,” For the most part I try to include each of those elements and follow that by re-reading and challenging my claims. I never really had something before that neatly summarized what should be included in a persuasive writing.

The second article was on a subject that I have been quite passionate about exploring and writing about and that was the graduation rates.  There was a study just released by the California Dropout Research Project that reported that LAUSD graduation rates have dropped. It noted that a major contributor to failure to graduate was the Algebra I component where on average, 65% of students in any given Algebra 1 class in LAUSD fail the class.

After all of the reading and research that I have done on this plus a bit of intuition coming from that other form of art called manufacturing, I am not at all surprised by the graduation rate.

The fact that that the graduation rates are dropping is really only the logical conclusion one can come to. The data that I found (Where Have All The Seniors Gone?) has been supporting this for a long time. How can the educators be surprised? Will they be further surprised by a dropping graduation rate when the new LAUSD Algebra II graduating requirements kick in at 2016?

Everyone says blame it on CAHSEE but lets’ for a moment follow Phil Holmes teaching (”Teacher instills a love of words, but the lesson is about life”) persuasive writing by parsing that thought. Is CAHSEE the blame or is it something buried within CAHSEE that is causing the high dropout rate? Near the bottom of the article there is a telling reason… The Algebra 1 requirement. So is CAHSEE the blame or is it the Algebra 1 requirement? When our car gets a flat tire do we blame the car or the road full of nails that we just drove over?

I wrote an article on this subject (http://westchesterparents.org/?p=403 ) where the director of The California Dropout Research Project study weighed in on this:

“Professor Russell W. Rumberger, (the CDRP director) said that while the intentions behind the CAHSEE are good, poor implementation hinders the program’s success. Instead, he suggested the state offer differentiated diplomas - degrees based on varying high school and testing performance, so that all students who take required classes and pass would receive a degree. He said schools could then identify exceptional students by issuing higher-ranking diplomas.”

“I think the idea [of the CAHSEE] is good but the way it is being done is not so good,” Rumberger said. “The idea of assessing how much kids know by two subjects, math and English [is flawed]. If a kid scores one point less than another kid, should they not get a diploma? It seems so arbitrary.”

There is also a recommendation in the California Dropout Policy Report that says:

6. Re-examine state high school graduation requirements

Both academic research studies and surveys of employers suggest that students need a wide variety of skills to be successful in college and in the workplace. These skills include both traditional academic skills, but also applied, vocational skills, as well as so-called “soft skills,” such as punctuality, perseverance, and the social skills needed to work in groups. In fact, one recent study found that improvements in a range of non-academic skills were more valuable than improvements in math achievement for increasing chances for enrolling in and completing postsecondary programs, and for increasing earnings eight years after high school.

In his 2008 State of Education address, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell announced that California would join 30 other states in the American Diploma Project Network, a nationwide effort to better align K-12 standards and accountability with the demands of college and work. Yet, to date, this network has only focused on academic skills, and not non-academic skills. If California wants to truly prepare its students for life beyond high school, it should examine a full range of academic and non-academic skills

In a nutshell… Some students are simply wired differently and might be more inclined to focus on important vocational skills and getting a diploma. If those skills were offered like they were in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s we would have more high school grads engaged in productive careers and maybe a more powerful industrial sector like Japan, France, Germany or shall I say.. China.  The success in obtaining a diploma and having achieved success could later lead them into college.  As it is being played out now however, our education leaders and elected officials have commited at least half of them to failure.

Finally - At the and of the LA Times article, Landsburg writes that Debra Duardo, the director of dropout prevention and recovery for Los Angeles Unified says that the district is responding to those problems. She also said the study overlooked the district’s recent success in keeping students in school, and on track to graduate, after they miss their normal graduation date. “If they don’t do it in four years, maybe they can do it in five years,” she said.

In the spirit of the Phil Holmes class, I challenge Duardo’s to show me the data.  The data that I have seen indicates that few students who drop out at school ever go on to get a diploma. Not in five years, not in ten.

Tags: GENERAL, OUR SCHOOLS // Add Comment »

Ray Cortines, Deputy Superintendent of schools is apparently concerned that the Innovation Division’s name implies that there is no innovation happening at other schools across the district, so he has changed the name to the ‘Design Schools Division’.

Dan Nieman, Director of Community Affairs for LAUSD Board Member Marlene Canter explains that each school partnership in the Innovation Division is a different “Design” in terms of how the schools will operate and how the network partner will work with the schools, so Mr. Cortines felt that Design Schools would be a better name for the Division.

The mission of the Innovation Division/Design Schools will remain the same and the relationship with LMU and the schools in Westchester will remain unchanged as well.

Tags: OUR SCHOOLS // Add Comment »

What is the worst disaster (on land) in our town?

History records that June 2, 1924 was the date that The United States Congress granted citizenship and voting rights to all Native Americans. Of course it is odd that we would have to pass national legislation granting citizenship to the original inhabitants of this land, but that remains our legacy. Others things happened too.

On that foggy moonless night , the banks of The Del Rey Lagoon; the former site of a Native American Tongva Village, were dry and parched—as 1924 was one of the driest years in Los Angeles recorded history. About 11PM, the Pacific Electric “Red” Streetcar made its last stop for the evening, at the present day intersection of Vista Del Mar and Culver Boulevards in Playa Del Rey. One passenger exited the trolley, carrying two five- gallon tin cans or coal oil, and made her way silently across the sandy lagoon shoreline towards the former site of the Del Rey Hotel—now a school for girls. The area was unlit, and on a moonless night she was nearly invisible to locals.

Site of the Del Rey Hotel, 1908, and location of the street car stop: near present day Vista Del

Previously the site of The Del Rey Lagoon Pavilion and Amusements and the failed Port Ballona, the area had been devastated. As times and tastes changed just prior to the First World War, the town’s tourist facilities were damaged or destroyed by nature. A large portion of the fishing pier collapsed in July 1911 and again in July 1917. Tide gates, which maintained high water in the lagoon, had to be dynamited during a heavy winter rainstorm because nearby Venice and the vast flat ground between became flooded. Soon the grandstands were torn down and sand choked the boat course. The Lagoon had become a cesspool; with hundreds of thousands of gallons of untreated sewage flowing in from Ballona Creek. The pavilion burned before the war, and the Del Rey Hotel, which had become a house of prostitution, was shuttered in 1917, as angry Los Angeleno’s forced its closure.

[Read more →]

Tags: One Reader Writes... // Add Comment »

Shouldn’t the Metropolitan Transportation Authority be just dealing with transportation?

Here is a recent example of the MTA foregoing it’s main mission in transportation and getting involved in… you guessed it, housing development.

Not surprising given our elected officials build at all cost mandate. They even go so far as recommending which developers to use and how many units (560) to build on a 9 acre site.

SUBJECT: METRO ORANGE LINE SEPULVEDA STATION JOINT DEVELOPMENT

ACTION: EXECUTE AN EXCLUSIVE NEGOTIATION AGREEMENT TO DEVELOP PROPERTY ADJACENT TO SEPULVEDA STATION

RECOMMENDATION: Authorize the Chief Executive Officer to enter into an Exclusive Negotiations Agreement (ENA) with JPI West to develop a residential project (as described in Attachments A and B) on the Metro Orange Line Sepulveda Station park-and-ride site. JPI West was selected as the most qualified in response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) ssued on October 8,2007.

ISSUE: We own a 12.45 acre parcel adjacent to the Sepulveda Station which is currently used as a park-and-ride lot for Metro Orange Line patrons. (Attachment C) Current transit parking demand is less than ten percent of the I,200-space park-and-ride. A highest and best use study of the site conducted by The Maxima Group for us in 2005 indicated the feasibilty of residential use as well as destination “big box” retail use. (Attachment D) In JulY 2007, our Board adopted conceptual development guidelines for inclusion in the RFP.

We wouldn’t be bringing this up except that ‘building at all cost’ wastes resources, creates more traffic, imposes more demands on our cities services and it hurts our families first. Even when it’s built at a bus site.

Tags: GENERAL, MANAGING GROWTH, TRAFFIC // Add Comment »

This is one of those intriguing local subjects I could write a book on (Maybe I will!). It involves the football programs of a little Jesuit college in Los Angeles that achieved great things, but shutdown its’ program- and another Catholic college that did it all.

The story begins when fellow team mates, Tom Lieb and Knute Rockne, played football together at Note Dame, in South Bend, IN. Rockne would go on as head coach of the Notre Dame “Ramblers” (they were known up until the 20’s as the “Notre Dame Catholics,” and did not adopt the “Fighting Irish” moniker until ’27), and Lieb was an assistant coach- ”LIEB TO ASSIST ROCKNE.; Former Football and Track Star Signs Notre Dame Contract, August 1, 1924,” Notre Dame Archives. When Rockne was ill and in a wheelchair, incapacitated with thrombosis, Lieb head-coached the 1929 Irish.

An all around outstanding athlete, Lieb won back-to-back NCAA discus titles in 1923 and 1924, and traveled to Paris for the 1924 Games (Jeux de la VIII Olympiade) and won a bronze medal in the discus. All of this, after breaking his leg in the 1918 season.

Coach Lieb, with a baby mascot Lion (Little Iggy), on the Loyola football field, Westchester, CA. Lieb coached Loyola from 1931-1938. He wrote his only book, “Line Coaching: A Text of Detailed Football Instruction,” in 1930. A signed copy (1937) of the book was acquired in 2005 by the Loyola Library, along with many of his letters- (LMU, Von Der Ahe Library).

A mystery begins to unravel at this point, involving whether or not Knute Rockne was actually the first Domer to be hired by Loyola as head coach. LMU’s archival history contain: “Recruitment of Knute Rockne as Athletic Director-Football Coach”: correspondence, 23 Dec 1929-March 1930, UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES, RECORD GROUP 7: STUDENT AFFAIRS RECORD SERIES D: ATHLETICS, 1911 TO PRESENT DAY, and evidence that he toured the Westchester campus: “Knute Rockne on campus: news clipping, 1931” (he actually toured in 1929). So we do know he was heavily recruited by Loyola University. But if he was too ill to coach in ’29, why had he been traveling? Did he intend to accept the job when he arrived in Los Angeles?

Several other accounts claim he had in fact accepted the head coaching job at Columbia University-but when the story was leaked, a humiliated Rockne vehemently denied it. Today-you can’t find a priest in South Bend that will confirm it.

On March 31, 1930, Knute Rockne, age 43, was on his way to Los Angeles where he was to speak at the Breakfast Club meeting in the Biltmore Hotel and later to meet the executives of the motion picture company that was to make the movie “The Spirit of Notre Dame,” in which he was to play himself. Tom Lieb was waiting at the hotel for his arrival, when news reached the Nation that Rockne’s’ plane had gone down near Bazaar, KS, killing all aboard.

A long, thorough and well publicized investigation concluded that the Fokker F-10A, operated by the newly-formed TWA, broke up in clear weather due to fatigue cracks in its cantilever stressed plywood wing, around where one of the engine mounting struts joined, and crashed, killing Rockne. The flights destination-Westchester’s own Mines Field (LAX).

So apparently with Rockne’s death (or before?), Lieb was offered and accepted the head coach position. One need only imagine what kind of a powerhouse Loyola might have become, if Rockne had indeed accepted the post and lived to coach in Westchester. Although, Lieb did have a good coaching record, and was responsible for bring NCAA hockey to the school.

Ten years later, in March 1940, in a final interesting twist, filming began on the movie: “Knute Rockne-All American,”-starring Ronald Regan as George Gipp, and Pat O’Brien as Rockne.

All of the football scenes were filmed in the summer of 1940, at what is now, Sullivan Field (LMU), Loyola University-Westchester.

DJ “Duke” Dukeshere is the author of the A Reader Writes… column can be found in the Westchester HomeTown News each month.

Tags: One Reader Writes..., WPDR HISTORY // Add Comment »