The Village Character
We won’t be seeing any new columns or hear any more humorous but biting speeches from our elder statesman, Arnold Hano (1922-2021), but he has left a legacy of inspiration for us to draw on as we try to calm and inspire Laguna Beach politics. As residents of Laguna Beach since 1955 Arnold and Bonnie Hano appreciated Laguna Beach immediately and so deeply that they were activists on issue after issue. They never give up.
Even in May, age 99, Arnold spoke at Bluebird Park at the 50th anniversary picnic of Village Laguna, the organization he had helped found, “I bless this organization that continues on doing the work that has to be done, taking it on the chin when it has to take it on the chin, and just keeps right on rolling. You are all to be congratulated and I thank you all.”
A professional writer, Arnold wrote 26 books, and hundreds of magazine articles, many of them focused on major league baseball. Locally he produced over 200 columns, “Hello There” (1961-63) in the Laguna Beach Post and the Village Sun (1971) used the pseudonym ‘Woody Cove’. Under his own name he wrote “The Village Character” (2003-2004) for the Laguna Beach Independent. When he decided to retire from the column, editor Stu Saffer asked me to fill the slot. How could I take the place of Arnold? I was intimidated. “I’ll never be able to write like you,” I hesitated. But Arnold encouraged, “People ask me, how do you write like that? As if I consciously decided to write a certain way. I write the way I write, that’s it. You will write the way you write and that will be just fine.” I often remember that confidence-building advice, and then, looking at a blank page, wait to see what I will write next.
Arnold was impatient with the arguments that continue on to this day about the future of Laguna. In 1961 when the town was considering a yacht harbor at Main Beach he objected, “That’s what the issue ought to boil down to: people who want a town the way it is to stay the way it is (on one side) and (on the other side) people who want to destroy its evolution and hustle it off to a different size, shape and smell.”
On the same theme in 1963 he wrote, “Let us make up our minds now that we would all be living in Newport beach if we wanted Laguna Beach to look like Newport Beach, but we live here because there is something here the other guy hasn’t yet been able to manufacture.”
In the early 1960s, the State was trying to convert Coast Highway into a freeway and Arnold was emphatic. “I’m serious, I understand that if nothing is done about a Freeway or about widening the Coast Highway in the face of projected population increase, our traffic will be slowed to a crawl, and bumper-to-bumper conditions will prevail. Fine, if it gets as bad as that, people who insisted on coming here in the face of such a predicted situation will have to make a choice. Get out. Give up cars for bicycles. Or walk. I know that isn’t progress. But neither is the deliberate murder of a town.” Now we see how the 101 Freeway cuts Santa Barbara off from its coastline. The same thing could have happened here. Objections from Laguna activists like Hano stopped it.
Hano didn’t just opine, he did what it took to take a stand, getting out on the streets. During one petition drive he and former mayor Charlie Boyd manned the table at the post office. There were only a few weeks to gather signatures for a ballot measure. It was the holiday season and the lines of customers were long. Arnold and Charlie had a system. One would go up to people in line and explain the petition. “I’ll hold your place in line while you go and sign,” he would offer, pointing to his cohort at the signing table. It worked. Right number of signatures right on time.
In 2004 he questioned, “Whose town is this? Is it the residents’ town, where we make the decisions? Or do we cede power to the already too powerful? If you agree that we must hang on to our town, be prepared to do so with tooth and claw. Or the town will disappear beneath the blade of a bulldozer and the heel of an out-of-town boot. Such is the hunger of those who must have more.”
“We are the movers and shakers, not the watchers and waiters. We are the doers. The sidelines are for other folk. It’s not that we resist change. We resist change for the worse. We resist change that destroys… We will be heard.” With this inspiration residents of Laguna continue with our dedicated protection of the town that shelters us, makes us feel at home, and helps us to become our best selves.
This week, speaking of their long and compelling life together, Bonnie Hano had this consoling thought, “We were very lucky.” Laguna Beach was very lucky too.
“It Takes a Villager, Wit and Wisdom by Laguna’s Irreverent Observer,” a compendium of Arnold Hano’s local columns, is available at VillageLaguna.org.
Ann is a landscape architect and former Laguna Beach mayor. She is also a long-time board member of Village Laguna, Inc.
Thank you Ann for sharing the words and wisdom of Mr. Hano and a source to find more. Inspiring.
What a lovely and moving tribute to a man-of-the-word and -of-his-word. Thank you, Ann. I didn’t know Arnold, except to say “hi”, but I followed his work and contributions even when I lived far away from Laguna. I remember those fights for keeping Main Beach without large hotels or harbors. And, I remember seeing Arnold at EVERY city council meeting until Covid. We were, as Bonnie said, lucky to have him. Every town needs its people of heart and vision. May we be as good and live up to his legacy.