A Fruitful Tree-Planting Trip to Africa

Two latter-day Johnny Appleseeds returned to Los Angeles last week from a three-month trip to Africa where they planted 5,000 fruit trees in five countries. The project, sponsored by TreePeople, involved a chain of volunteers and donations from growers, manufacturers and airlines to provide villages, schools and individual homes with trees.

Five-year-old surplus apple, plum, pear, almond, pomegranate and prune trees that would otherwise have been burned or buried were donated by three California growers. They were pruned, packed in special mulch and flown to Africa where volunteers Susan Becker and George Ollen distributed them. Several years of research, planning and organizing support within the African countries paved the way.

Trees were planted in each country--Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Cameroun and Ethiopia--to coincide with rainy seasons and to match species with climate and soil conditions. Further research will determine whether the project will continue and expand to a long-term, self-help program that can provide surplus fruit trees to developing countries. TreePeople has been running a similar program for low-income families in Los Angeles and on Indian reservations in the Southwest, distributing 50,000 trees in three years.

“Five thousand trees is a lot of food. A tree gives fruit for years,” said Becker, who has a master’s degree in forestry from Yale. “The people were very enthusiastic; they wanted more.”

Ollen told of a crippled man living in an Ethiopian village: “He couldn’t use his legs; he had to crawl. But when we started working, he crawled out with a hoe in his hand and a sickle to cut grass for mulch. For two days he was there, working on his knees.”

Job-Hunting at 79

As a female entrepreneur 50 years ago, Helen Edwards was an uncommon woman. Nearly 80, she is still not your average person. She owns two companies and works full time with no thought of retiring.

“I love it. It is my life,” Edwards said, adding she would “go out with my boots on.”

Edwards began her varied career as a secretary at the San Francisco Ad Club in 1926 and, for the most part, has been connected with advertising in one way or another since. Working in personnel for KHJ radio in Los Angeles in 1936, Edwards found her niche in life. When she called personnel agencies searching for creative people, they didn’t know what she was talking about.

“So, I decided I could do it myself better,” she said and opened the Helen Edwards and Staff Agency, specializing in finding jobs for writers, artists and advertising specialists. Through the years she has branched into other fields, like finding jobs for executives, opening modeling agencies and owning an insurance agency with her late husband, Donald B. McAfee. But her first love is finding the best job for the creative person.

Although she said she has no idea how many people she has placed in jobs in her 50 years in the business, 20 years ago she wrote an article for Coca-Cola’s newsletter titled “I Have Had 100,000 Jobs.”

“These days people change jobs very often. Even when they take a job, they keep looking. They want to be sure they have the best job possible,” Edwards said.

“We have many more people than we have jobs. Everybody wants to be in Los Angeles.”

Donators to the Rescue

It was reported last week that the day camp at the 9th Street Elementary School in the heart of Los Angeles would have to close early because of a shortage of funds.

But the renowned American heart has come through and donations ranging from $10 to $5,000 for a total of nearly $7,000 will ensure that the day camp for 390 disadvantaged children will remain open at least until next Friday.

Sidney Springer of Santa Monica, who owned a business across the street from the school for many years and “often heard the voices of the children in the schoolyard,” was looking for a meaningful way to celebrate his 80th birthday. He found it in the form of a $500 donation to the camp.

Evelyn Silver of Los Angeles, who came to see for herself what was happening at the school, donated money and brought her husband, Henry, back the next day. When they found the staff short-handed, she spent the day reading stories to children and he helped escort kids to the YWCA for swimming lessons.

Last week Jorge Armandariz, camp director, thought today would be the last day. Now they are shooting for one more week and camp counselors are “so enthused,” he said, they have been talking about donating their time the last four days to keep the children off the streets until the original closing, Aug. 28. The telephone number at the school is (213) 622-0669.

U.N. of Technology?

Since religion, philosophy, politics and economics are “subjects of contention” and have failed to bring the people of the world together, Cyrus S. Nownejad thinks technology is the key.

Nownejad, an Iranian who came to California in 1950, was recently named honorary professor at the University of Hangzhou in China. During an address he made to the administration, faculty, students and visiting government officials, the Los Angeles attorney proposed a United Nations of Technology. “The only thing all nations in the world agree on is technology. The whole world wants progress,” said Nownejad, who specializes in international law. He is also a chemical engineer who has worked with oil, paper and plastic companies.

Nownejad first met professors and administrators of the university four years ago through his wife, Edyna Sischo-Nownejad, who began a Chinese/American professor exchange program at Merced Community College.

“Legal education is very new in China,” he said. “Only in the last four or five years have they been teaching law in the universities.” Nownejad said he was chosen as the first honorary professor in the university’s history because of his combined legal, engineering and business experience in transferring technology between companies and countries.

He has been invited to return to China to give yearly addresses at the new school of international law at the 100-year-old university in Hangzhou, a resort city near a bay, river and lake in Southeast China. The motto of the city, whose name means Westlake in English, is: “Up above there is heaven; on Earth there is Hangzhou.”

Quidnuncs Still Gossiping

After 58 years the Quidnuncs are still going strong. Eight Southern California women, all over 75, who graduated from Los Angeles’ Manual Arts High School in 1927 and 1928 did not want to lose touch with each other, so they formed a club in 1928 that has been meeting regularly ever since.

They named themselves the Quidnuncs, which means gossipy or busybody, partly because “no one else knew what it meant,” but largely because that is their main function--to talk, said Thelma McReynolds, who lives in Sierra Madre. The group started with 23 girls who were members of the Southwest Presbyterian Church’s Girl Reserves, affiliated with the YWCA. Some had become friends in grade school, either the Santa Barbara or Normandie grammar schools in Los Angeles.

“After all these years we can tell each other anything we want and no one gets mad,” said Mary Johnson, who lives in Riverside.

The Quidnuncs met recently to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of Henriette and Victor Eaton from Balboa, the first of their members to be married 50 years. The group has gone through weddings, babies, career changes, moving, grandchildren and deaths.

“People miss a lot who don’t have friends like that,” McReynolds said. “I wouldn’t take anything for the memories.”