2017 Year in review: Beach passings

January

Helicopter pilot Christopher Reed ran for Hermosa City Council in 2009. Photo courtesy of the family

Photographer Michael Justice, of San Pedro, was a longtime contributor to Easy Reader. Photo courtesy of the family

Copter crash claims Justice, Reed

Photographer Michael Justice, a long time contributor to Easy Reader, and helicopter pilot Christopher Reed died in January when their helicopter crashed in Los Angeles Harbor. Justice, 61, lived in San Pedro. Reed, 42, lived in Hermosa Beach. Justice’s photos were notable for being tack sharp and perfectly exposed during the black and white era when cameras required manual focusing and manual light metering. Justice and writer Andrea Makshanoff traveled the world, working on a book about religious pilgrimages.

Reed was a candidate for Hermosa Beach City Council in the 2009 election. He worked as a CFO as well as flying commercial helicopters.

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Deborah “DK” Kahlo and husband Sal Longo, of Hermosa Beach, provided a showcase for local musicians at their Suzy’s Bar and Grill. Photo courtesy of the family

Suzy’s ‘DK’

Deborah “DK” Kahlo and husband Sal Longo purchased Suzy’s Bar and Grill in 2008 and made it the area’s premier showcase for upcoming musicians. “When I started bringing my dog Charlie to the bar, DK would laugh about how skinny he was and order a doggie burger from the kitchen,” singer-songwriter Esther Kang said. “The sight of DK sitting outside on the patio with her bottle of wine and cigarettes became comforting to me. She was a diamond in the rough.” She passed away in January at age 66.

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School principal Brinker-Brown

Margaret Brinker-Brown, a 46 year resident of Hermosa Beach, passed away in January, at age 71. She worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for 36 years, most recently as principal at Manchester Avenue Elementary School.

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Phil Weisgerber. Photo courtesy of the family

Artist Phil Weisgerber  

A fellow artist at TRW/Northrop Grumman described Phil Weisgerber as the” Leonardo da Vinci of the art department.” The prolific painter of space inspired fantasies was also a patron of fellow South Bay artists. He passed away in January at age 74.

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John Croteau. Photo courtesy of the family

Croteau was Silver Strand surfer

John Croteau, one of the Hermosa Beach Silver Strand surfers in the ‘60s, passed away in January.  Croteau moved to Haiku, Maui 20 years ago and became a general contractor and an expert windsurfer.

March

Dave Letchworth (right) and longtime partner Rafael Solorzano at their Lou E Luey’s Baja Seafood Grill on the International Boardwalk in 2004. Photo

Restanteur Letchworth

David “Sleepy Eyed Dave” Letchworth was a central figure in the South Bay bar and restaurant business, dating back to the Pier 52 and Schlumpfelder’s bars he owned in downtown Hermosa Beach in the early 1970s. He passed away March 7, at age 78. His Redondo King Harbor restaurants included Pancho & Wong’s, Lou E Luey’s, and Delzano’s by the Sea.He also owned Lunada Bayhouse and Alfredo Garcias in Palos Verdes. The Redondo Beach Chamber of Commerce named him Man of the Year in 1986.

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April

Caricature of council candidate Gary Brutsch during the 1982 Hermosa Beach City Council election. By Bob Staake

Former Councilman Brutsch

Former Hermosa Beach city councilman and city treasurer Gary Brutsch passed away in April while driving from the gym to eat at Eat At Joe’s. Brutsch was elected to the Hermosa Beach City Council in 1982, having recently begun what became a long, successful career in real estate. He was previously an officer with Los Angeles Police Department.

 

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Don Swift with one of his innovative creations. Photo by John Siskowic

Shaper Don Swift

Surfboard shaper and master carpenter Don Swift passed away in April, at age 64. Almost every day for nearly five decades, Swift sat at his spot, 40 yards southwest of the end of the Topaz jetty, waiting for the next set wave. It didn’t matter if it was one foot or 10 feet, freezing cold or blown out, Swift was out there by first light.

 

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Sean Smith. Photo courtesy of the family

Smith spent last day on beach

Former AVP volleyball player Sean “Smitty” Smith passed away in April, following a morning surfing and an afternoon playing volleyball in Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii. He was 52. Following graduation from Redondo Union High School Smith played volleyball at El Camino College. In 1987, he joined the AVP tour, where his partners would include future Olympians Eric Fonoimoana and fellow Redondo High Sea Hawk Sean Rosenthal.

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Smith led cycling tours.

Don Smith, of Manhattan Beach, passed away in April at the age of 92. He attended the Naval Academy and pursued a 24-year career as a Navy line officer. On retiring from the Navy in 1973, Smith worked as Director of Administration at Hughes Space & Communications Group. His many hobbies included leading cycling tours through National Parks.

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100-year-old Wright

50 years on Strand

Shortly after Frances “Meems” Wright met her future husband on Catalina Island in 1938, he told her they would summer in Hermosa Beach. After several years of marriage, the couple The couple would have seven children and would move from Beverly Hills to living permanently on The Strand in Hermosa for the past 50 years.she spent the last 50 years  living on Spanish Colonial home. Wright passed away in May three months short of her 101st birthday.  

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June

Ryse William, of Redondo Beach, starred on the Sea Hawk basketball team. Photo

Sea Hawk star Williams

Redondo Beach Union High basketball shooting star Ryse Williams died in June from a rare form of cancer, just days before he was scheduled to graduate and move on to Division 1 Loyola Marymount, which had offered him a full scholarship. In his memory, the school retired his number zero jersey and renamed the school’s annual tournament the Ryse Williams Pacific Shores.

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Easy Reader cartoonist Keith Robinson, of Manhattan Beach, at a National Cartoonist Society conference. Photo courtesy of the family

Making It cartoonist Robinson

In 1985, Keith Robinson entered a cartoon in Easy Reader’s annual Anniversary Writing, Photography, and Cartoon contest. The cartoon, titled “Making it at the Beach,” spoofed the childhood game of Chutes and Ladders. The first square read “Move out of parents’ house.” The final square read  “Buy a house on The Strand — You win.” Chutes included “Bloodsucking landlord raise the rent. Lose 1 turn.”

The cartoon was awarded first place in both the writing and cartoon divisions. Over the next three decades, “Making It” appeared weekly on Easy Reader’s Letters to the Editor page. At its height, it was also distributed to over 70 other newspapers by United Press Syndicate.

The Mira Costa High graduate passed away June 14, at age 61, from complications related to congestive heart failure.

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Ty Page (center in blue) with fellow Pier Avenue Junior High and Mira Costa graduates Mike Purpus (kneeling) and Brad Bowden, Derek Levy, Mike Boyd, Wright Adaza, Jon Wright, George Murray, Dan Bradford, Tom Horton and Mike Balzer. Photo courtesy of Mike Balzer

Page was skateboard innovator

Former Hermosa skateboarder and surfer Ty Page passed away Thursday, June 1 at age 59, at his home in Park City, Utah. Page was a member Larry Stevenson’s Makaha skateboard team in the late ‘60s. He invented over 50 skateboard moves and by his late teens was earning over $100,000 a year on the skateboard circuit. In 2016, he was inducted into the IASC (International Association of Skateboarding Companies) Hall of Fame.

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Luke Gilroy. Photo courtesy of the family

Gilroy turned to public service

Former Mira Costa High cross country team captain Luke Gilroy gave up a successful career on Wall Street to attend the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, in preparation for a  career in public service. He died in June at age 33.

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August

 

Joan Arias, of Hermosa Beach, in 1966, on the hod of her and her new husband Ron’s first car, a 1948 Plymouth. Photo courtesy the Arias family

Hermosa activist Arias

Joan Arias, of Hermosa Beach, was active in the League of Women Voters, the Historical Society and the Legal Aid Foundation. Over a long and varied career, she lectured on linguistics at Georgetown University and La Verne College, worked as a paralegal and earthquake preparedness manager and served as her writer husband’s editor. She passed away at home in August at age 76.

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September

Mike Bright, of Hermosa Beach, (left) with fellow lifeguards Tom Zahn, Greg Noll in Melbourne, Australia in 1956.

Bright a five time MB open winner

Five time Manhattan Beach Open Volleyball Tournament winner (with partner Mike O’Hara) and Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race record setter Mike “Bones” Bright passed away Sept. 22, at age 79. Bright grew up in Hermosa Beach and was a member of the 17th Street Surfing Seals. They spent their summers surfing and playing volleyball, creating the model for what would later be marketed as “The Beach Lifestyle.”

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October

Donnie Miller.

Breakwall surfer Donnie Miller

Donald “Donnie” Miller, one of the South Bay’s top surfers in the early 1980s, died Oct. 8  “He was still charging waves at the Redondo Breakwater last winter. He was a good man,” said lifelong friend Michael Luhrsen said.

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Randy Ruby kayaking off of the Esplanade. Photo by Mike Avalon

Photographer Ruby

Beloved Redondo Beach photographer Randy Ruby, known for his photos documenting the beauty of South Bay beach life and for his Hawaiian shirts and infectious happiness, died in October at age 63 “I just really became aware of the natural beauty around me that I think for a long time I took for granted,” Ruby said in a 2013 Easy Reader interview. “His attitude never changed from the first day I met him, this unmistakable smile with a passion for life he always had, no matter when you were around him,” said local pro surfer and friend Alex Gray.

 

MBPD’s Rachael Parker,

MBUSD’s Sandy Casey

Manhattan Beach Police records technician Rachael Parker and Manhattan Beach School District special ed teacher Sandy Casey were celebrated as “Two new stars shine over our city” following their deaths in the Oct. 1 mass shootings at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. (Related story page 14).

 

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December

Pioneer World War II Edna Davis, of Manhattan Beach. Photo courtesy of the family

WWII pilot Davis

On a clear morning above Dodge City, Kansas, in 1943 Edna Modisette Davis became the first woman to solo pilot the twin-engine Martin B-26 Marauder. The hard-to-fly World War II bomber, with its cigar-shaped fuselage and stubby wings, didn’t have a good reputation.

Combat pilots were refusing to fly the plane they dubbed the “The Widow Maker” and “The Flying Coffin.”

“Our job was to show it could be flown, and basically, embarrass the men,” the Manhattan Beach resident said in a 2016 Easy Reader interview. Davis passed away in December at age 96.

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Teacher Stewart

Jan Stewart retired in 2010 after teaching for 45 years at the old South School and then in her famous “Blue Crew Room 2” at  View School in Hermosa Beach. “I’ve played with young folks so long, I don’t want to go play with the old folks,” she said upon retirement. Stewart passed away in December at age 76.

 

 

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