Fall and especially October is a big time for community fund-raising events – with Casa Youth Shelter (Sept. 29), Pathways for Independence (Oct. 6), St. Hedwig’s Autumnfest (Oct 12-14), The Taste for Los Al (Oct. 20), and Wings, Wheels and Rotors (Oct. 28) being held on consecutive weekends.
But for a long time around here, the only big community event between Labor Day and the Holidays was the Los Alamitos Fall Festival.
That event began in 1948, and was the first big undertaking sponsored by the newly formed Business Association. The first festival was a three-day (October 15-17) community carnival which turned out to be a big success, despite the heat. Seven rides, 14 booths, steaks barbecued to order, and an auction whose donated items included a calf, a pig, and a 100-pound sack of lima beans — how could it not be fun?. The highlight of Saturday was a parade of over 100 kids and their pets and Sunday featured barbecue dinners and a drawing for a free television set.
In 1949 the festival was moved to the week after Labor Day although the events were basically the same. The biggest difference was that it was decided all proceeds would go towards building the Grace Johnson Youth Center. Grace Johnson was a longtime community volunteer who had just passed away and it was decided to name the new community center (a combination civic building for adult activities and meetings and youth center) for her. Unfortunately, only enough money for a basic concrete pad could be raised — until 1952 when race track owner Frank Vessels proposed to donate the proceeds from a race at his 14 day meet to the youth center fund. But state racing law said funds could not go to an organization named for a person, so the Grace Johnson Youth center soon became the Los Alamitos Youth center.
1950 saw the introduction of a beauty pageant at the event — with Sharon Labourdette (later Sharon Berg) being named the first Queen of Los Alamitos. That year Labourdette also won the Miss Anaheim competition and competed for the title of Miss Orange County.
The competitors for the 1951 Queen title included a trio of local 16-year old girls — Rose Lopez, Laurraine Reeves, and Kay Stockton. And by this time the parade had expanded from kids and their pets to include the Long Beach Mounted Police (frequent entrants in the Tournament of Roses) and the Long Beach Lancerettes drill team (which included some Los Alamitos girls) and of course, the fire engines and trucks of the local Volunteer Fire Department.
Within a few years — thanks to the funds and the donated labor crews provided by Frank Vessels — the festival was held for the first time under the roof of the recently completed Youth center which was across Katella from Laurel School. (It is now the office building between the Chase Bank building and McDonald’s.
The event still held a beauty contest and featured a drawing with the grand prize being one of those new-fangled Hi-Fi radios – probably of the Zenith, or Philco brand.
The event was still being held as late as 1970, but sometime after that it ceased to exist.
After a few years the Chamber or some other group tried to revive the spirit of the festival with a new event called Cottonwood Days, but it did not last too long.
By this time the event started having other competition. Casa Youth Shelter which was founded in 1978 immediately started hosting their annual Commanders Ball which is still one of that group’s major fundraisers.
St. Hedwig’s annual Autumnfest, usually held over the Columbus Day weekend, also competed for community interest.
The competition for community dollars kicked into overdrive in the late 1990s with the introduction of a progressive dinner to aid Pathways to Independence, an organization which mentors young women from difficult backgrounds. Pathways was started in the mid 1990s by Laurel High principal Dave Bishop with money from his own pocket. And they were struggling until Lisa Mais and some other Los Alamitos-Rossmoor-Long Beach area women stepped up and organized a progressive dinner in 1998. The event rescued Pathways and continues to grow each year.
The Taste for Los Al started in 2001 by the officers of the Los Al HS Girls Basketball Booster Club (Lisa Rakusin, Kristal Cheek and Linda Padilla) working with me. Fortunately, I was smart (or lucky) enough to get the help of three more ladies — Diana Hill, Lisa Riphagen, and my wife, Nancy — who unlike me actually knew what they were doing. The Taste has now become the largest Fundraiser for many high school activities. Booster clubs receive 60% of the revenues, expenses are close to 25%, and the rest goes to OUR Los Al which has used its money to help fund a new gym scoreboard, a softball backstop and fence, a tennis windbreak/fence, improvements to the wrestling room, and the trainer’s room, and biggest of all, to the design and funding of an all-weather track — the plans of which are now currently at the Department of the State Architect.
Completing Fall’s Fab Five is the Wings, Wheels and Rotors exhibition, which was started was started in 2003 by Dean Grose and the Los Al Chamber of Commerce and now draws around 35,000 attendees from all over Southern California.
The success of all these events should come as no surprise to anyone. The 90720 zip code has the most non-profit groups of any in Orange County. What is most impressive is how our little community can continue to support all these worthy causes so strongly.
Larry Strawther is, among other things, a local history buff who runs the Los Alamitos-Rossmoor History Project website (www.losalhistory.com) and is the author of a Brief History of Los Alamitos and Rossmoor which will be published by the History Press in November. He is also the long-time editor-publisher of Local Sports (www.localsports.biz) and the co-chair of The Taste for Los Al.