Urges Trash Awareness
For the past 12 years, I have made a weekly walk through the 2300, 2400, 2500, 2600 and 2700 blocks of Honolulu Avenue in Montrose picking up the sidewalks and street gutters along the way. Thanks to those visitors who just don’t care, my business will always be “picking up.” My weekly “haul” usually fills a large garbage bag provided by the City of Glendale along with their “Orang-u-tongs.” I believe most people really do care about the trash on their streets and sidewalks but some just don’t take the few seconds it takes to put their trash in a receptacle.

Glendale does provide many trashcans along the avenue, but many times they are filled beyond capacity by people who do care. We need more or larger trash receptacles and more frequent pick ups, along with ashtrays so that there will not be “thousands” of cigarette butts on the sidewalk and in the planters. I believe the City of Glendale and the Montrose Shopping Park Assn. would like to see this happen, too, but both must work within their funding restrictions.

Glendale has its Adopt a Block program where residents and businesses can adopt their own block to keep clean. Glendale Neighborhood Services provides the trashbags and picker-uppers to anyone who will register with them. Most of Montrose is in the City of Glendale. Call Sandra Rodriguez in Neighborhood Services at (818) 937-8333 if you would like to volunteer for their great program and help keep the streets of Montrose and Glendale free of litter. It only takes a few minutes out of your day, and the streets and sidewalks will thank you and be a better place to live, shop and stroll.
Bob Thompson
Montrose

 
Contemplates CV … and CV Weekly
Thanks to Brandon Hensley who prepared a wonderful article in your July 17, 2014 CV Weekly [Where Are They Now? CVW Checks In with Mike Hull].

I really enjoyed the Mike Lawler article (he looks like I did in law school at Georgetown after seven years in pro football) on History of Foothill Boulevard. I have cruised Foothill for 70 years. It is, indeed, Main Street USA to me.

My grandmother lived on Foothill Boulevard at the corner of Foothill and Briggs Avenue from 1924 to her death in 1968. The Hull family was huge, three boys and two girls. My dad Bruce played football at Glendale HS, Glendale JC and USC, 1934-35. I was the first to stay in our beloved Crescenta Valley for high school in 1963.

The First Baptist Church-La Crescenta article by Michael Arvizu touched my heart, as I was baptized in the First Baptist Church; the old church was the Ark youth building. Pastor Travelle (sic) dipped me full body into the tub in front of the entire congregation in 1961. I thank God I got off to a good start in La Crescenta.

So much to share on our La Crescenta; anyhow, I am very pleased to see our little Crescenta Valley noticed by you all. The CV Weekly articles are a delight. I hope to contribute more in the future.

My quest is to emphasize perseverance and God’s gifts. A positive attitude and gratitude in the grind-of-life is absolutely necessary to survive and, perhaps, to even prosper in the long run. There is no easy way for most of us. We all must fight each day to get stuff done. In junior high, at Clark, and at CVHS my first year, each day was a struggle in sports, schoolwork and socially. I was not a natural in anything, but had to work at it. We had no examples to follow (Coach Hess, Thompson, and Barnes, along with principal Dr. Thomas, set the good examples).

We were in tiny La Crescenta, no freeway; Montrose was the “big town” and it was half the size it is now. Folks would have died laughing if it was suggested that one of us would be an NFL first round draft choice (never heard of one out of Foothill League), no USC starters or pro football seven-year veterans that I knew of, let alone Georgetown law grads. This stuff was never contemplated.

There were no models to follow; we had to create our own. It was day-to-day in the fight. All I had was the guts to keep going and not quit. We had no practice field, but worked out in Montrose Park. CV was brand new and crushed by Glendale, Muir, Hoover and all the other schools in all sports. Not until my junior year did we really win something and that was epic victory over Hoover. That brought the feisty Falcons some praise and confidence.

In all you do, realize that it is the small stuff each day, perhaps in the quiet of your heart, soul and mind that really makes the difference in the long run. God willing you can convert that power into something useful and productive, helpful to loved ones and society.

I had been working at being good at stuff for many, many years and failed at most, including academics until, by God’s grace, I caught on. I did not even start law school until I was 31; did not think I could do it, let alone pass the monster California Bar. But I risked it all, took the jump and pulled it off – by the grace of God.
To say that at CV, my sophomore year, I would be at this point now, that I would have experienced this awesome adventure, is to consider a miracle.
Mike Hull
Mission Viejo

Letter of Thanks to the Community
I have a very important job to do, but fear that without proper, able assistance, I may never finish writing and sending all the “thank you” notes that are more than warranted and now terribly overdue. Would you, please, help me in this effort?

My family and I moved into the Crescenta Valley in 1999, when my older son was ready for first grade. Ironically, it was not until this past year that I felt as though I actually “mattered” in this community – besides, of course, to my two dear sons and my “true blues,” who have never stopped gracing my life. I want – and need – to “reach out” to give my forever heartfelt gratitude to each person in our community who made space in his or her life – some once, many consistently – to compassionately, generously and most sincerely do or say something, no matter how large or small, that made a critical and invaluable difference in helping me to stay emotionally and practically afloat and to navigate the most treacherous, disappointing, devastating and terrifying waters I have yet experienced in my 63 years on the planet.

Through the CV Weekly that has a finger on the pulse of our community … and also a proven line of communication to so many people in it … I do believe that many of those folks are the same good people I am now trying to reach. I want each of them to know how much I appreciate what she or he did, and does, for me, that I am forever in her or his debt, that I am surviving, that things will continue to improve and that I so look forward to being a contributing – and much less of a needy – member of this community. I also want each to know that she or he matters to me.

With sincere thanks and appreciation for your assistance,
Maggie O’Rourke
La Crescenta