The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 88

VIE San Diego County Part VThursday, May 21, 1987 Cos Anclcs Slimes Action Hailing L.A.'s Unheralded First Families Fatal Attack by Bears Doesn't Shock Officials Animals Are Not 'Gentle the Experts Point Out in Wake of Brooklyn Zoo Tragedy By JEANNINE STEIN, Times Staff Writer Mormon Couple Are Piecing Together Pedigrees of the City's Earliest Settlers and Their Descendants Ki the bears out at night. Maybe they got out. Polar bears are notorious for killing people. If you go in with them you're not going to come back out." Gary Zarr, a spokesman for the New York Department of Parks and Recreation, responded that he had not heard questions concerning why the bears were not locked up at night. But an investigation is in progress, he said.

Although the bears were surrounded by two four-foot-high fences, an island and a moat, he added, "It is an outdated zoo. But we've never had any problem. For the last 50 years there's never been any incident like this. We did not feel bears were any danger to the public. Nothing from our experience indicated that a tragedy like this could occur." At the Los Angeles Zoo in Griffith Park, the two polar bears and other carnivores are locked up at night behind concrete and steel barriers in areas called "bedrooms" that keep the animals from sight.

During the day, the bears are separated from the public in a pit surrounded by a five-foot-high fence, five feet of land, a 15-foot moat and a pool. "We have the bedrooms for control," said zoo director Dr. Warren Thomas. It's done not only to keep the public safe from the Please see BEARS, Page 29 "I think people get a false sense of security Maybe these kids watched too much 'Gentle That's a real danger. That's why we have people feeding bears in Yellowstone and elsewhere." That sad speculation came Wednesday from Jean Hromadka, president of the American Assn.

of Zoo Keepers and an elephant keeper at the San Diego Wild Animal Park when she was asked about the tragedy at Brooklyn's Prospect Park the night before. On Tuesday, 11-year-old Juan Perez of Brooklyn was partially eaten by two polar bears after he and two friends entered the bear enclosure after the zoo closed. Zoo officials there said the area is surrounded by a tall, barred fence, but that would not prevent someone from getting into the bear pit. Two companions who accompanied Perez into the compound escaped without injury and police shot the bears to death. Hromadka and zoo officials elsewhere expressed the fear that the public sometimes doesn't comprehend the dangers posed by wild animals.

But, in general, they said zoos take precautions to guard against such attitudes. "I don't understand why the bears were out," Hromadka said of the Prospect Park tragedy. "Usually most zoos bring their bears in at night, especially polar bears. I've not been at a zoo where they leave By PAUL DEAN, Times Staff Writer Marie Northrop is a genealogist with a dedication to giving credit where heritage is due. Her husband is Joe Northrop, a seafood broker just as interested in the value of ethnic links as in the price of abalone.

Together, the Eagle Rock couple are building higher recognition for the overlooked settlers of Los Angeles by public marking of their memories and places and anniversaries, by weekend festivals for descendants and by scribing pedigrees for those with little or no idea of their ties to the pobladores (settlers), the soldados (soldiers) and escolta (escort) who set the first plats of the West's largest and richest megalopolis. "There are societies for descendants of those who arrived on the Mayflower, for sons and daughters of the American Revolution, even one for Pocahontas," Marie Northrop said. Severely Neglected In Los Angeles, she knows, there's a group called the First Century Families. It holds annual meetings to remember the city's first movers and shakers. The Sepulvedas.

The Bannings. The Vails. The landed gentry. But for the pioneer Mexican dirt farmer of 1781, says Mrs. Northrop, for the Spanish soldier, the Indian interpreter, the black servant, the mulattoes and other mixes and now their 10,000 progenies, the neglect has been severe.

Even intentional. For when one's ancestors are non-white and far from pure Castilian, she says, the preference of prejudiced scions and popular historians is to ignore tangled roots. "I know some descendants who are Quin-teros," Northrop continued, "but they are reluctant to admit it and one went to the grave denying it." Because, she said, original settler Luis Quintero was black and wife Maria was mulatto. "Yet they were the people who came. These are the people who started Los Angeles.

And these are the people I want to focus on because they're entitled to it." With annoyance translating to action, the Northrops are digging deep and often to keep this past from slipping any further. In 1981 in time for a Los Angeles Bicentennial they felt was ignoring the city's founding families, the Northrops formed Los Pobladores 200. The target was 200 descendants of the founding 44 (22 adults and 22 children) who migrated from Mexico to colonize Los Angeles in 1781. "To date, we've found 250," said Marie Northrop. Please see SETTLERS, Page 30 PSt4 I lil-3e YEARS 08- Ai.r x-" jitf- s.

VL David Nelson Society Photo Museum Benefit a Snappy, Lively Affair IRIS SCHNEIDER Angelei Tlma Joe and Marie Northrop seek out descendants of L.A. colonists and recognition for settlers such as Dona Eulalia Perz, inset, who was reputed to have lived to 139. LA JOLLA It only takes two to tango, but since the Museum of Photographic Arts attracted some 200 patrons to Friday's "Tango MoPA" fund-raising gala, the dance floor at times threatened to become a maelstrom of dangerously whirling couples. The museum baited its invitation hook with rather more After-School Lessons for Inner-City Kids than the usual treats, which resulted in an especially finely SAN DIEGO bearing wallpaper), and light switches embedded in the floors, since Mason Phelps believes that they intrude upon walls. One guest described the residence as "larger than Liechtenstein." Other draws included the beneficiarythe Balboa Park museum is very popular with influential supporters of other fine arts institutionsand the party theme, which made much of the sultry tango mood first popularized in the 1920s.

In keeping with the '20s nightclub atmosphere, cigarette girls snapped Polaroid pictures of the guests, some of whom posed against the palm trees (silhouettes picked out in tiny lights) that decorated the walls of the black tent used to shelter the dinner and dancing. Event organizer Carol Randolph Please see SOCIETY, Page 4 COUNTY feathered flock show ing up for this fourth anniversary celebration. Among the lures was the party site: the new, massive and admittedly magnificent residence of fine arts patrons Liz and Mason Phelps. Built rather like a museum itself, the house includes such interesting features as the "hostility room" (a bathroom decorated with epithet Inside View By DAVID JOHNSTON, Times Staff Writer "Tuesdays yuck," fourth-grader Sengaik Yeoh told a stranger. Tuesdays, classmate Danny Ozuna agreed, "feel weird." When the last bell rings on Tuesdays, Sengaik and Danny must leave Norwood Street Elementary School, south of downtown, and go home to TV cartoons and, one hopes, homework until their parents get home from work.

But four afternoons a week, the two boys and 40 other children happily stay after school. Parents help them put on skits; they teach cooking, crafts and, courtesy of the Metro YMCA, swimming at the Y's new Ketchum rooftop pool downtown. This after-school program is unusualno, it is downright extraordinarybecause it is operated, on the cheap, by parents who live in HOURS WEEKEND EVENTS Page 18. MICHAEL EDWARDS Lot Angelct Timet A muggy Monday afternoon doesn't bother inner-city children who romp in the YMCA pool. 5f.

ABBY: Page 3. ANN LANDERS: Page 34. ASTROLOGY: Page 29. BRIDGE: Page 27. COMICS: Page 33.

ERMA BOMBECK: Page 2 Mulfl Daua In I nun (Vuintu Scottish GamAS in Ctranna CntmUi Salute to Black Music and Composers. one of the poorest neighborhoods of Los Angeles, an area that gets few services from the county's 19,000 charities. Twice, funders who searched nationwide for models of effective, low-cost neighborhood programs have awarded grants to the Norwood School children, whose program costs only about $6 per child per week. But instead of flourishing, expanding to serve more poor inner city kids, the Norwood program and two others like it are withering for lack of money. The Norwood children, together with youngsters at Trinity Street and Vermont Street elementary schools which serve impover-Please see SCHOOLS, Page 26 YOU FEATURES: 10 Places to Learn Rock Climbing, Page Consumer Views, Page You Can Help, Page 14; Your Coins.

Page 10; Your i Collectibles, Page 12; Your Stamps. Page 1 1 Your Wheels, Page 1 3. I Jack Smith together a warm, sensible, fun -loving human being. But, again, I was not from the press, trying to take a picture of her in the bathroom, nor I never asked her if she was the one who 'killed' her mother." Elias is the first person I have ever communicated with who has met Princess Stephanie. I am obliged to regard her as a real person on his word, and to assume she has class.

Inevitably, many readers nominated people I left out. How could I list them all? Doug Warren, a screen biographer who worked with them, says I should have included Jimmy Cagney, Gary Cooper, David Niven, William Powell and Robert staying at a motel in the San Joaquin Valley. I phoned the motel, got DiMaggio in bed and asked him how he liked being married to the sex symbol of America. With his usual politeness, he answered that it was fine. Now which of us had the class? Ann Sherman James chides me for leaving dignity out of my definition.

"But you partially redeemed yourself with Rafer Johnson. His Olympic stand will forever remain a monument to class. Margaret O'Gara recalls that in her book "The Honeycomb," Adela Rogers St. Johns says of the Duchess of Windsor, "perhaps that might explain that while she had the look of breeding she did not 'Mr. he said, actually getting my name right, 'do you know what my favorite play I was fascinated.

'No, Mr. I said, 'what is your favorite 'Mrs. he replied, beaming. "Talk about grace, manners, poise, modesty and more than a touch of noblesse oblige. Eric Anderson of Ontario also champions Truman.

"He always seemed to me to be the epitome of the 'stand-up Someone who always acted with principle, regardless of the consequences. To me, this is class." I take it back. Harry Truman had class. I felt guilty when I said he didn't. I met him once in the Galleria of the Biltmore during the 1960 convention.

As Axelrod says, he was not surrounded by Secret Service men at the time. We simply strolled down the hall, talking baseball. Truman was the guy who said, "The buck stops here." Diane Silver of Arleta says, "You left out what is surely 20th Century America's best example of class Eleanor Roosevelt." Mary Carroll Bell of Lancaster says, "I suppose you left out Fred Astaire because to include him would have been too obvious." Brenda Shaughnessy, a senior at Newbury Park High School, chastises me for making "gossip-magazine generalities and unfair snap judgments." I plead guilty. "You label 21 individuals as being without class, not counting the entire history of California governors and Houston B-girls." (What I said was that Lyndon B. Johnson had no more class than a Houston B-girl, thus unfairly maligning all Houston B-girls.

I beg their pardon. Lesson No. 2 in distinguishing class calls for a broader definition to include dignity, inner strength, self-esteem My nominations of several public figures who have class and several who don't, according to my lights, have brought, foreseeably, both disagreement and affirmation. Let me concede that, as some readers have pointed out, in presuming to judge whether others have class, I have betrayed a lack of it in myself. Class, as I said, is defined by the dictionary as "excellence, especially of style or appearance," to which I added "grace, manners, poise, modesty, courage and generosity; there is a touch of noblesse oblige in it too." If I were to suggest that I had all those qualities, I would automatically eliminate myself on modesty, at least.

I must also say that I do not know the persons I named as having class or the lack of it. They are simply images. Reflections on a screen. Creations of the media. The real person may not show through in what we see.

As I said, all I know of Princess Stephanie is what I read in People magazine. And I conceded that my judgment of her as being without class might be "petulant and short-sighted." Jorge A. Elias, an entertainment agent for overseas bookings, writes that he has just returned from a visit to his native Argentina with Princess Stephanie. "Like you, the only thing I knew of Princess Stephanie was whatever was published in People magazine or the likes of it. Boy, I was wrong in my judging.

I have found (in the few days we spent Preston as having class. "Preston reeked of class, drunk or sober." I would not think that class reeks, nor that anyone could have it drunk. But then I didn't know Mr. Preston. Walter C.

Pitts says I should have added "inner strength and self-esteem" to my definition. "To me," he says, "no one exemplifies all those qualities more than Joe DiMaggio. I don't know anyone who would argue that point. The morning after DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe were married, the paper got a tip that the newly weds were have what we call class and if you can find a real substitute or synonym for that, please let me know." Playwright George Axelrod differs from my judgment that Harry Truman didn't have class. "It was in 1955.

His daughter had dragged him to the opening of a particularly rowdy play of mine and then unbelievably on to the party at Sardi's afterwards. There, after he had been jostled by crowds ex-Presidents didn't seem to need Secret Service men in those days and kissed by Jayne Mansfield, he was finally introduced to the author of his evening's discomfort. He was graciousness itself as he attempted to put me at ease..