History

John Drayman It's a gift to the community whose time has come. That about sums it up. I am referring to the new Montrose Town Clock installed on Tuesday and pictured in the Glendale News-Press/Foothill Leader on Wednesday without explanation of just how this extraordinary landmark came to grace the streets of Montrose. Some years ago, second-generation business owner and friend of Montrose, Anita Geyer, who owned Peet's Stationers, passed away, leaving a portion of her estate to the Montrose Shopping Park Assn.

On Sunday, July 16, 2006, take the family on a journey through the time to the Los Angeles of yesteryear at our Annual Family Fun and Ice Cream Social program. Explore our completely and partially restored Victorian buildings with costumed tour guides. Share the fun of history with your family and learn what Los Angeles was like before freeways, cell — phones, and fast food. Invoke genteel family competition with a game of croquet, hoops, or marbles. Or, learn how to make toys that don't require batteries or a joy-stick!

I read somewhere that history is something that never happened written by a man who wasn't there -- and reading some of the history book accounts of what happened on June 6, 1944, makes me believe that there is more truth than poetry in that statement. When I looked through a history book that my grandson was using in class a few years ago, I was appalled to see that the Great Depression was barely mentioned and there were only two pages devoted to the European theater of World War II. It was almost a footnote -- no explanation of what caused it, nothing of the madman who terrorized Europe, devouring country after country, and the holocaust that killed 6 million Jews.

Katherine Yamada Casa Verdugo Restaurant, at the end of Brand Boulevard's Red Car line, became a favorite destination for travelers from Los Angeles in the early 1900s. The restaurant was only 8 miles from Los Angeles, over a picturesque route past Echo Park and along the high bluffs lining the river. According to an article in The Clutch, a magazine devoted to automobile drivers, dated 1911, the ride offered "wide views of the smiling valleys and of the piled-up mountain ranges, through fragrant orchards and blossoming berry fields."

On Saturday, Feb. 17, at around 10:00 a.m., a ceremony was held at the Bonetto House at 2819 Manhattan Ave., just off of La Crescenta Avenue. The home's owner, Barbara Hannegan, and members of the Historical Society of Crescenta Valley unveiled the plaque designating the house as a Glendale Historic Landmark, stating publicly the significant contributions made by the Bonetto family in La Crescenta's history. As a prelude to the presentation of the plaque and a tour of the house, guests shared their memories of the Bonetto family, and homeowner Barbara Hannegan spoke about her part in restoring the house after purchasing it in November 2004.

You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give. — Winston Churchill   The annual Crescenta Valley Chamber of Commerce Recognition Banquet will be held on Thursday, Nov. 6 at the La Cañada Flintridge Country Club. The dedication and hard work of all the recipients are an inspiration to us all. This year we will be honoring the following: • Man of the Year: Pastor Dave Roberts . Pastor Roberts has been pastor of the 1927 Montrose Church for the past 20 years.

A small notice in a 1916 edition of the Glendale Evening News informed readers, "Emil Kiefer, an employee at the White Store, is now working for Pulliam Undertaking Co. He intends to make this his life's work. He is a young man of great energy. He came here from Minnesota two years ago and has made many friends. " But shortly after this notice ran, Kiefer said good bye to his many friends - including a young lady we'll meet later in the story - and left town. He was in the first group of volunteers who responded to the call to fight in the Great War, as World War I was known in those days.

Sean Sauceda moved quickly through dry brush near a Pasadena freeway off ramp before dawn Tuesday morning, looking for the homeless people most at risk of dying on city streets. He stopped to peer inside a cluster of bushes. “People hollow them out by breaking the branches inside,” Sauceda said as he snapped a branch. “It's natural shelter. It's large enough where you can fit a dome tent inside of it. I've done it.” Sauceda, 41, a Fresno-area native, lived on the streets of Los Angeles for 13 years.

A recent revelation that Leslie Combs Brand, the so-called Father of Glendale, probably fathered two children with a secret mistress came as a shock to many, but local history enthusiasts are downright delighted. Longtime Los Angeles Times columnist Cecilia Rasmussen, who concluded her “L.A. Then and Now” history column with the piece on Brand on April 6, backed up her scoop with a DNA test that linked Brand to a descendant of his alleged mistress, Birdie Esther Carpenter Gordon.