Staying in for the Friendship Shelter

BARBARA DIAMOND

Dinners will be served in homes across Laguna and a couple outside

the city on Saturday night to raise funds for Friendship Shelter.

The Laguna Beach shelter is a temporary home for men and women

trying to get back on their feet.

Forty hosts will participate in the fundraiser this year. Some are

new and some -- such as Ellin Henderson and the Rev. Colin Henderson

-- have been involved with the shelter since it was a hope and a

prayer.

“The shelter is lucky to have such friends,” said Jill Silver

Edwards, chair of the event and a dinner host with husband, Steve.

Other Laguna Beach hosts include Joan Silverman, Ilene Glassman

and Donna Smith at Glassman’s home; Barbara and Greg MacGillivray,

Jany and George Gade and Bruce Dwyer at the MacGillivrays’ -- they

trade off with the Gades; Sue Freeman and John Hancock and Joy

Dittberner and Tom Peters at the Freeman/Hancock home; Tom and Martha

Davis, Jeff and Debbie Mulligan and David and Margaret Peterson at

the Davis home; and Suzy and Jeff Eighanayan, Meg and John Casalaspi,

Jim Palmer and John O’Neill, Lauren and Richard Packard, Jane Knight

and Mark Kjer, Kathy and Jim Conrad and Ellen and Adrian Kuyper, all

in their own homes.

Dinners also will be hosted by Lynette Braunstein in Laguna

Niguel; Nadia Bozzetti and Brennan Cassady in Newport Beach; and

Binnie Beaumont and George Western in Corona del Mar.

“Dinners Across Laguna is a wonderful evening of good food and

good friends,” Edwards said.

The hosts provide the guests and some of the food. Major food

donors include Cafe Zinc, 5 Feet, French 75, Neff Neff Catering,

Sundried Tomato, Laguna Culinary Arts and Tivoli Terrace.

“Without the restaurants, the hosts and the guests, there would

not be an event,” Edwards said.

And without the event, programs at the shelter would either be

curtailed or canceled. Programs include budgeting one’s income and

job-seeking skills, not to mention food and moral support.

For more information about the shelter or to make donations of

services, goods or money, call (949) 494-6928.

A CHEERY NOTE

Susie McCalla Ornellas sent holiday greetings to friends from

Hawaii where she moved with her husband, Frank, and children last

year.

The McCalla family owned the Forest Avenue drug store for more

than 40 years, daughter following in dad’s footsteps as the

pharmacist. Ornellas said she misses everyone, but life is good.

“I know all of you quit believing it when we said we were going to

move [here] someday, but we did it,” Ornellas wrote.

She and the kids -- Garrett, Kristina and Jackie -- moved into

their new digs at the end of July. Furniture and boxes from their

former home showed up two days later, and Frank arrived a month

later.

“[The kids] have found there is life after California,” Ornellas

said. “Of course, Hawaii was a pretty good second choice.”

Garrett recently had a camp-out in a 200-year-old mountain lodge.

Kristina swam with the dolphins on a field trip. Jackie is into

dance, drama and sleepovers. Mom and dad swim daily in the ocean.

“We are blissful, the happiest we’ve ever been,” the letter

continued. “Whoever would have thought I could be happy without that

crazy wonderful little pharmacy?”

STILL WELDED

Roger Jones’ notion to produce a bio-flic about Katy Weld and the

late John Weld is not the first proposal she has heard.

“I think it is exciting, but it’s happened three times before,”

Katy Weld said Tuesday. “The books were optioned, but never produced.

However Roger Jones is a go-getter -- and his wife is a darling.”

Jones is the author of three books and owner with his wife,

Sherill Bottjer, of Villa Rockledge. As reported in the Coastline

Pilot on Jan. 23, Jones is rounding up the last of the funding needed

to begin production on “Chasing the Moon.”

The film will lean heavily on “Fly Away Home,” John Weld’s account

of his life as a Hollywood stunt man.

It was during his second stint in Hollywood, as a screen writer,

that John and Katy Weld met at a party hosted by Florence “Pancho”

Barnes at her oceanfront home on the property known as Smithcliffs.

“There were two houses on the property,” said Katy Weld, a budding

actress at the time, known as GiGi Parrish when she first saw John.

“Florence lived in one house, and her grandmother had the other.”

Barnes was a stunt pilot in Hollywood and built a landing strip on

the North Laguna bluffs to fly in the movie crowd for parties. The

landing strip was closed when one of Barnes’ friends couldn’t stop at

the end of the downhill runway and was killed on the rocks below,

Katy Weld said.

“Florence brought Hollywood to Laguna Beach,” Katy Weld said. “Her

grandmother didn’t like Florence’s friends and said she wished she

would move away. Florence said, ‘Fine, I’ll get my friend to move the

house.’

“So Aubrey St Clair moved the 14-bedroom home to Crown Point,” she

said. “Unfortunately, like everything else in Florence’s life, it

disintegrated.”

But the Welds’ love affair never disintegrated. They were married

67 years before his death in 2003 at the age of 98. During their

years together, the Welds published the Laguna News Post for many

years and owned an automobile franchise in town; and John wrote

books, 12 of them published. Constance Morthland -- and somebody

ought to document her life -- hosted autographing parties at her Moss

Point estate.

Katy Weld lives alone now at the Inn at the Fountains in Dana

Point.

“One place is almost as good as another when you lose your other

half,” she said.

“But come visit,” she said. “I have a drink every afternoon at 4.”

Here’s looking at you, kid.

* OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline

Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box

248, Laguna Beach, CA 92652, hand-deliver to 384 Forest Ave., Suite

22; call (949) 494-4321 or fax (949) 494-8979.