Maynard brings back memories

The following article first appeared in the Wednesday, January 9, 1985 edition of the “Ojai Valley News” on Page A-10. It is reprinted here with their permission.

ABOUT FOLKS IN OAK VIEW

Maynard brings back memories
by
Nancy Breese


It will be a great get-together for a great cause Saturday, Jan. 19, at the Nordhoff High gym when popular jazz musician Maynard Ferguson is presented in concert, to help raise funds for the valley’s annual summertime gala — the Fourth of July celebration. Oak Viewians have always been very much a part of the day-long festivities. The Oak View Women’s Club, individual horseback riding groups, 4-H Clubs, Little League, Civic Council, and the Oak View Lions Club have, through the years, been caught up in the spirit of the day, and many local youngster and adult has added a page to his memory book from parade-day experiences. Marge Hatton was kind in providing the following “trips down Memory Lane.”

“Barbara Smith particularly recalls the year of the Bicentenial, 1976, when she was chairman of the prize-winning Oak View Women’s Club float “100 years of Womanhood.” Well over 1,000 tissue-paper flowers of red, white, and blue adorned the float. So you can imagine the chagrin of this energetic group including, among others, Lovell Willis (then president and now living in Visalia), Anne Gutierrez (still an exceptionally active member and officer) and Judy Dickens (now of Ojai) when the fog came rolling in late the night of July 3. The dyed paper in the flowers began to weep — and so did the participants. Smith, always ingenious when it comes to “saving the day” under pressure, remembered the giant parachute her family used for camping, located it, and covered the mammoth flower-covered canopy for the night. Needless to say, all turned out beautifully.

“THIS WAS by no means a first parade experience for Smith. In the mid-60s, her husband Mike enlisted her help in using his entire baseball team, on which her son, Mike, Jr. (Butch), was a player, and setting up a baseball diamond on their float, with a game in full swing. In 1970, daughter Wilma, now grown and still a valley resident, walked the Indian pony “Judo,” ridden by owner, daughter of Jim and Loretta Wagoner, who was 11 years old at the time. The girls not only walked the parade route, but also walked to and from their homes on Valley View — approximately eight miles each way!

“Oak Viewan Kathy Moore and Topa Topa 4-H Club leader Kathy Caywood really had their hands full getting kids and animals (including a tiny bottle-fed lamb of Merilee Sherman’s) organized at the parade grounds last year.

“With a giant wedding cake as a central point, a miniature “bride and groom” had a slight difference of opinion. No problem for four-year-old Brandi Azevedo, daughter of Rick and Linda Azevedo, who has been center-stage often as a frequent beauty contestant and winner. But five-year-old “groom” Brian Haley, son of Roger and Chris Haley, decided that darn “thing” was just too far up in the sky for him. Leaders and parade assistants, including Shari Skinner and Linda Warner, finally convinced him all would be well. It was, until the float started to move and Tamara Caywood, trying to retrieve an American flag that was taking off for the “wild blue yonder,” nearly tumbled off the tractor herself.

“The Old-Time Fiddlers’ Association, with cut-up Larry Shellnut, was a popular entry in the mid-70s with their fiddling and outhouse antics. Another popular group was the 3/4 Midget Racers with Rick Taylor and several other drivers from the California Motor Association. Local Shriner Milt Taylor and his wife Marge, who have a miniature antique car, have been in more parades than they can remember and could fill a book with happy anecdotes.

“THE PARADE grounds on Country Club Drive are a hub-bub of activity for hours before the parade. Two yeas ago, three-year-old Danny Jones, son of Randy and Jenice Jones, wore himself out (not really, Danny never wears himself out) running back and forth, trying to decide whether to ride with his mom on the Oaks fitness float (where there was lots of action), or on the Century 21 Little House float filled with youngsters three to eight years old. After being boosted innumerable times off the ground onto the Century 21 float, he decided that’s where he would stay. He did — until the parade was underway, and he THEN realized he should’ve located the outhouse when he was on the ground. 6’3″ Century 21 broker Bruce Hibberd came to the rescue and air-lifted Danny off and back on again.

“LAST YEAR the Jones’ rode together on an entry from their own Flexation Fitness Center. They are just one of the Oak View families who consider Ojai Valley’s Independence Day celebrations “the greatest.” They whole-heartedly support the Maynard Ferguson benefit concert — for two reasons, not the least of which is that they are avid fans of Ferguson.

“Tickets for the concert are available at the Fitness Center, 655 Monte Via St., and at the Century 21 offices in Oak View and Ojai. It’s an entertainment bargain at $6.50 per person. Newspaper editor Earl Reeves once stated, “A boom and a sparkling burst in the night sky may not make a whole lot of fiscal sense, but it does wonders for one’s morale and sense of tradition.”

“Oak View and the Ojai Valley’s morale is good, their sense of tradition intact. Indications are that locals will turn out in force to hear Maynard Ferguson an Jan. 19. It’s certainly an easy, enjoyable way to suppost a worthwhile cause.”

Thank you, Marge. I really appreciate your contribution! Have any news you’d like to share? Please call me at 649-9416.


Nancy Breese

Women-of-the-Year give time, energy to help community

The following article was first printed in the WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1985 edition of the “OJAI VALLEY NEWS” on Page A-1. It is reprinted here with their permission.

Women-of-the-Year give time, energy to help community
by
Brenda Loree


When the OVN news staff chose Arlou Mashburn and Carmen Robertson as its 1985 Women-of-the-year, it was without the knowledge that the two of them not only knew each other, but have been great friends for 24 years, and that, their lives have dovetailed and coincided many, many times since they met in 1961.

“When I moved to Ojai in 1961, Arlou lived across the street,” said Robertson. “The day after we moved in, the doorbell rang and there was this beautiful glossy head of hair with a coffeepot. It was her. It was my welcome to Ojai.”

AND WHEN THEY showed up for a picture-taking session together on Monday, throwing their arms over each other’s shoulders, assuming a buck and wing position and announcing themselves as “The Pit Sisters,” we weren’t sure but what they had misunderstood and thought they’d won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour.

Such high spirits are but symptomatic of high energy these two human dynamos possess. Rare is the person in Ojai Valley who hasn’t been cheered by, but more to the point, helped by, one or both of these women.

Neither stands on much ceremony. Neither holds formal office nor chairs important commissions. What they both have is heart, “miles and miles and miles of heart. “They are both such lobbyists for the Ojai Valley and its people that if they took their act to Washington, D.C., they’d be banned for undue influence.

Officially, Mashburn is the executive director of the Ojai Valley’s Youth Employment Service (YES). Officially, Robertson is the Ojai Valley representative of the Ventura County Arts Advisory Council.

IT’S WHAT THEY DO unofficially that singles them out. The two of them combined have probably driven their and everyone else’s kids in Ojai Valley enough miles on field trips to go around the world twice. They’ve both been unofficial sympathetic ears to enough teenagers (and their parents) in the valley to qualify for master’s degrees in family counseling.

Mashburn

One of Mashburn’s bosses, Ginny Barrett, member of the YES board of directors, said it best about Arlou: “She’s done so much more than what she’s paid to do, put in so many more hours, that she’s still our best volunteer.”

“When you see Arlou coming, you know you’re going to have a good time,” said the Ojai Valley native, can’t remember a time when she wasn’t working with youngsters on a volunteer basis. “Arlou and I were PTA nursery school volunteers, elementary school on up.”

Being mother of six and working almost exclusively with children on her job only makes her want to do more with youngsters.

“There aren’t enough people who like kids,” she said as she sat in her cubbyhole YES office on the grounds of Chaparral High School. “Hiam Ginott, my idol said you should give your child a way out. Don’t come down on them all the time. We’d never talk to adults the way we talk to our kids.

“I wish there was an outreach program here for the kids, something like Interface,” she mused between calls; calls from people wanting to hire someone and calls from kids wanting to be hired.

AFTER AN hour and a half of trying to squeeze an interview in between calls and visits from youngsters, it became obvious that Mashburn is her own “outreach program.” She serves as a personal counselor as much as a placement director on the job. Her manner is so disarming, so non-threatening, that monosyllabic teenagers walk in and find themselves pouring their hearts out to her.

“See how I love this job,” she beamed after effecting a particularly difficult job placement by phone, one in which everyone was happy. “Isn’t this great?”

“What I most hope to do here is maintain the reputation of Evy Foyil. She was here before me and it’s easy for me because of her example,” she said.

Mashburn will also be honored later this year when she leads the annual Independence Day parade down Ojai Avenue on the 4th of July as its Grand Marshall. Barely five feet tall, Mashburn will probably have to sit in a booster chair so her fans can see her in the back seat of the convertible. She won’t mind, because from her standpoint, it will mean she’ll have a better view of all of her friends.

Robertson

“She works for the good of the artists in this community,” said Carmen Robertson’s longtime friend Diane Volz. “She serves them; she brings the public to them. That’s her joy.”

ANYONE acquainted with Robertson has been buttonholed at one time or another to at- [missing words] there. She worked with the Presbyterian Church youth group and others.

In recent years she has worked as an aide at all levels of the Ojai school system, particularly with the special ed children. “I’m best as helping kids feel good about themselves,” she says. “If you say anything, say I stand for the dignity of children.”

Asked about her supreme accomplishment she said, “I was cleanup hitter for the Topa Topa Elementary School baseball team.”

ROBERTSON HAS very nearly lead two lives in one. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she became a child actress literally at the age of six months. For the next 26 years she worked for the likes of W.C. Fields, Bonita Granville, Jane Withers and appeared in “Our Gang” comedies. As she grew up she worked with Clark Gable, was a stand-in for Lana Turner and swam for two years in Esther Williams movies. “I spent two years under water. I also dived for Ginger Rogers. I was a good swimmer.”

Once she and her friend Diane Volz worked in the movie “Ziegfield Follies” together; they only realized it years later when they met in Ojai. Robertson was in the water and Volz was on the stage in a lavish “smoke-flame water ballet number.”

Then Robertson met and married yacht skipper Jack Robertson; they started a family and moved to Ventura County. The family grew to include Nick, Drew, Cullen, Winslow and Sydney, now all grown and all distinguished scholars in one way or another.

The day she started her family, she retired from the movie industry; the nurturing of her (and other people’s) children became her career. She and Jack resisted temptations to leave because “we wanted our family to have the Ojai way of life.”

“I came home when I came to Ojai. This is a mystical valley. I have a mystical streak and I feel better here than anyplace else.”

WE’LL TRAVEL ALONG, singin’ our song, side by side.
ARLOU MASHBURN, executive director of the Ojai Valley Youth Employment Service, can squeeze a job out of a turnip if there’s a teenager in need of it. (Timothy Teague photo)
CARMEN ROBERTSON — Avoid her at all costs if you don’t want to be buttonholed into attending every cultural effort staged in the Ojai Valley. (Timothy Teague photo)