Frank Lanterman: From Scrooge to Father Christmas for the Mentally Handicapped

Frank Lanterman’s name is ubiquitous in our area. The Lantermans were the founders of La Cañada and Frank continued their legacy of community building. As such they left their name on a street, a historic home and museum, and a popular auditorium. Even the 2 Freeway that connects the Crescenta-Cañada Valley to Los Angeles is named the “Frank Lanterman Freeway.” But Frank Lanterman’s true legacy is in the way California deals with its developmentally disabled population.

Frank Lanterman and his brother Lloyd were third generation of Lantermans in La Cañada. Whereas Lloyd was shy and retiring, preferring to stay in the family’s garage and tinker with mechanical things, Frank was loud and boisterous. It fell to Frank to continue the Lanterman family’s real estate business and water company. As well, Frank indulged himself in a love for music, in particular organ music. He played regularly in public, at his church and in theaters, accompanying silent movies.

His life in La Cañada took an abrupt turn in the late ’40s when drought dried up local water wells in the Crescenta-Cañada valley. At that time, only incorporated cities were able to tap into large water projects such as the Los Angeles and the Colorado River aqueducts. La Crescenta turned to Glendale city to provide water, and thusly Glendale annexed about half the Crescenta Valley in exchange for that service.

Over in La Cañada, where dry water wells were also inhibiting growth, Frank Lanterman saw a political solution. In 1950, he ran for the state assembly on the platform of allowing unincorporated areas, such as La Cañada, to form “water districts” that could tap into the aqueducts. He won and easily accomplished his goal. Thanks to him, La Cañada and La Crescenta have water today.

Frank next turned his attention to social programs which, as a conservative, he loathed. The self-professed curmudgeon got on the Social Welfare Committee and the Ways and Means Committee with the express intention of weaning freeloaders from the teats of government assistance. But at his very first committee hearing, he was faced with the realities of the abysmal treatment of the mentally handicapped in state-run institutions. Like Scrooge being changed to Father Christmas by the visits of three ghosts on Christmas Eve, that one hearing turned Frank overnight into a crusader for the developmentally disabled. He roared into action, quite literally, when he loudly growled at the state assembly, “How the hell long has this been going on?!”

Over the next 28 years, Frank became a workhorse in the state assembly, writing and getting passed over 400 bills, many of them improving the lives of the mentally handicapped. His focus was on ending the state’s habit of locking them in substandard institutions and instead granting them the same rights as those without handicaps. He established funding for regional centers where they could get the help they needed to live at home or even independently, which forever changed the lives of the disabled. In essence, he freed them from the prison of life in an institution, and gave them what they needed to live relatively normal lives. That is the true legacy of Frank Lanterman.

But one lesser-known legacy of Frank’s lives on today. Throughout his political career, Frank continued his love affair with organ music. In 1963, San Francisco’s grand Fox Theater was being demolished, so Frank purchased its truly massive 30-ton Wurlitzer organ and had it installed in his La Cañada home where he enjoyed playing it on his breaks from his work in Sacramento. Frank died in 1981, and soon after the house, along with the organ, was donated to La Cañada. However, no money was available for the organ’s restoration nor did the neighbors of the Lanterman House wish it loudly playing in their quiet neighborhood. Fortunately, the Disney Corporation stepped in, purchasing and restoring the monstrous organ for its Hollywood El Capitan Theater. Yes, the organ that rises up through the stage floor to be played before first-run Disney movies is Frank Lanterman’s old instrument. A great legacy for Frank Lanterman on both counts.

  mike lawler