By Donna Furey | LB Indy
Lives Cut Short
Nina Fitzpatrick, 22, died last April after being struck by a motorist who told police she didn’t see the Laguna College of Art & Design student crossing Laguna Canyon Road. Fitzpatrick, a graduate of Santa Ana’s Orange County High School for the Arts, lived in Irvine and was set to graduate in June. She was an avid surfer.
Her death and a public memorial attended by 300 people put pressure on Caltrans to fast-track installation of a traffic signal at the crossing, which was accomplished last October.
Fitzpatrick’s death, followed by that of bicyclist John Colvin and a homeless local, Regan Hess, both also struck by motorists, served as a catalyst to ignite community dialogue about traffic safety improvements and for the city to embrace a number of initiatives to improve conditions for cyclists and those on foot.
Colvin was a senior account executive at EventMover in Irvine. Fit and healthy, he had completed several marathons and a half-triathlon and was training for an Ironman.
Photo by Mitch Ridder.
Darrin Reed, the former executive assistant to the superintendent of the Laguna Beach Unified School District, died last September following a hard-fought battle with leukemia. He served three superintendents in 14 years with grace, humor and efficiency.
Reed was a constant smiling presence throughout Laguna, an active member in his church and a regular performer with “Lagunatics,” the annual musical-parody.
The Creatives
Last month, Laguna lost gallerist Richard Challis. He came to Laguna in 1946 after serving his native England in the Royal Tank Regimen and in Nigeria.
The following year he bought a picture framing business and was eventually persuaded by artists to hang a few of their paintings, establishing one of the town’s earliest galleries. For over 35 years, his Challis Galleries on Mountain Road represented and sold the work of scores of notable artists including Phil Dike, Rex Brandt, George Post, Roger Kuntz and Leonard Kaplan.
Challis was involved in many philanthropic efforts, including organizing an art auction fundraiser for victims of a 1971 flood. He was a member of Laguna Greenbelt, Friends of Newport Coast and participated in efforts to halt a takeover of the Laguna Art Museum. He became a naturalized citizen in October 1993 and in 1994 donated his gallery records to The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, where they can be reviewed by special appointment.
Iranian-born Armen Gasparian, a contemporary Impressionist painter, died last February. Born in 1933, he grew up in an English boarding school in Darjeeling, near Tibet. Gasparian moved to Laguna Beach from Hollywood to teach landscape and figurative painting at the school now known as Laguna College of Art and Design, taking students to study and paint in Europe and Mexico.
At his Laguna studio, Gasparian painted with artists such as Roger Kuntz, Frank and Phil Interlandi, Paul Darrow, John Paul Jones, Dick Olden and Vincent Farrell. He was a 20-year exhibitor in the Festival of Arts while continuing to teach workshops and enter exhibitions.
Jerry Rothman, a major Laguna sculptor, died last June in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he had established his signature work, a two-acre arts complex. Rothman, born in 1933 in Brooklyn, N.Y., created his first sculpture garden on the grounds of his Laguna Beach studio in the 1980s. The land formed a shallow canyon in a grove of eucalyptus trees where he designed terraces on which sculptures were strategically placed. He laid out pathways so that visitors could stroll the grounds and experience each large-scale piece individually.
Rothman, a graduate of Otis Art Institute, was head of the ceramics department at the University of Iowa before becoming head of the ceramics department at Cal State Fullerton in 1971; he retired in 1996. He is credited with inventing non-shrinking clay and developing new ways of fusing clay and metal in order to create large-scale sculptural forms. Laguna Art Museum holds the largest collection of his work at a public institution.
A sculptor of a different sort, Hobie Alter, started out shaping surfboards in his father’s Laguna Beach garage during the ‘50s, died at 80 in Palm Desert last March.
Applying his high-school honed woodshop skills, he made balsawood surfboards by hand for his friends. When balsawood became scarce, Alter started to tinker with foam being developed by Dupont. With friend and employee Gordon “Grubby” Clark, Alter pioneered the development of polyurethane foam surfboards. Alter popularized the sport and Hobie-branded boards became the top brand in the world. Legendary surfers and shapers would go on to work or ride for Alter, credited with launching California’s iconic surf industry.
A top surfing competitor himself, Alter frequented big wave contests in Hawaii where a ride on a 40-foot catamaran provided the inspiration to transform sailing as well. He subsequently developed his namesake, Hobie Cat catamaran, a lightweight and affordable craft pulled on a trailer that democratized sailing. Its asymmetric hull mimicked boats carved by ancient Polynesians, but were produced with a modern material; laminated hollow foam.
Alter received the Waterman Achievement award from the Surfing Industry Manufacturers Association in 1993, was inducted into the Huntington Beach Surfing Walk of Fame in 1997 and admitted as an inaugural member of the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2011 alongside Dennis Connor and Ted Turner.
The Community Contributors
Stuart Wilson, Ph.D. died in February. A therapist, he served as an expert witness on psychological testing and was the author of multiple editions of a guide that helped simplify use of the so-called ink blot test for diagnosing certain mental illnesses. His legal activism as head of the California Association of Psychological Providers led to a Supreme Court ruling ensuring that patients in hospitals could have access to the services of a doctorate level mental health specialist when needed.
Following retirement from his Newport Beach practice, Wilson joined the board of the Susi Q Senior Center in Laguna Beach and became the resident historian for the era during which the center was organized and built. He compiled clippings of pertinent news articles from 1979 to 2009 and published them in a hard-back volume entitled “Clippings on the New Susi Q Senior Center.”
Sandi Carter spent over 40 years in Laguna Beach, teaching in nearby school districts, tutoring and running the L.E.A.R.N. summer school program. In 2013 she won the Senior Olympics in women’s doubles tennis, one of her proudest accomplishments. She passed away last January following a recurrence of breast cancer. She was 69.
In 1991 when she was first diagnosed with breast cancer she became involved with the newly established Orange County Race for the Cure, joining the OC Komen Foundation’s Speakers’ Bureau to share her experience and raise awareness and funds for breast cancer prevention, education, research, and treatment. She ran the race faithfully every year, joined by family and friends, winning the Survivors’ Division for seven straight years.
A champion and supporter of Glennwood House, Barbara Northam Painter died last March.
A 53-year resident, Painter was an avid runner and volleyball player and was involved with many charitable organizations. Painter’s unending service to community earned her the honor as citizen of year in 1992 in the annual Patriot’s Day Parade.
