A CHRONICLE OF THE PASSING SCENE : Valley Housewife to Break a Leg

If you are a 50-something Valley housewife and personify Valley values, there is a 32-year-old writer-producer named Joe Fox who would like to talk to you about your acting debut.

Fox is mounting a four-performance production of his play, “It Never Rains,” about the riots in South-Central Los Angeles, and he is still looking for a real person to play the Valley housewife.

“The production is taken from interviews I conducted after the riots with people from all over Los Angeles,” says Fox, who does public relations work for the First African-American Methodist Episcopal Church in South-Central. Performances of the play will be given Jan. 20 and 22 to 24 at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles.

“I interviewed African-Americans, Koreans, Latinos and Anglos to get the words for this production, which is a dramatic reading of those many voices and their perceptions of what the riots meant,” he says.

The play, which is funded by a $3,000 grant from the city of Los Angeles, tries to give Angelenos a good look at themselves. “I come from Boston and New York, where everyone rubs shoulders with everyone. In Los Angeles, which is supposed to be a melting pot, people live in their own ghettos,” Fox says.

He’s not just talking about Watts or Koreatown, but the Westside, San Gabriel and the Valley. “People in Los Angeles really isolate themselves from everyone who is not like them,” he says.

Anyone who would like tickets or to try out for the part--which, like all the parts, pays no salary--should call (213) 663-3373.

“The Valley housewife is not a cheap shot or the goat of the production. She is a real person, with a perspective that is valid to her life,” he says.

Doctor’s Rx for Romania’s Babies

Dr. Alvin Miller, 65, of Encino has been a neonatologist for 35 years at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Panorama City and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He’s taught at the UCLA and USC medical schools and has traveled the world--including Greece, Turkey, China, South America and Japan--as a violinist with the Los Angeles Doctors Symphony Orchestra.

But nothing prepared him for last summer’s trip to Romania.

Miller was asked to make the two-week trip that began in late August by the Romanian government’s Ministry of Health and Project Concern International, a 30-year-old private nonprofit foundation.

He was looking into devising a program to bring Romania’s medical care for newborns into the 20th Century. The given was that he would be working with equipment and buildings that were totally out-of-date.

Miller was staggered by the what the country suffered under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. “Ceausescu wanted to raise the population of the country from 22 million to 33 million as quickly as possible, so he outlawed birth control and encouraged young women to have as many babies as possible,” the doctor says.

More than 400,000 children are in orphanages, the result of everything from mothers too young to care for them to minor birth defects to simple abandonment, he says.

“My job,” says the physician, “is to make sure the new generation of Romanian children gets as good a start as possible.”

He is now writing the plan, which includes sending teams of doctors and nurses to the seven major cities in Romania to train medical personnel in advanced methods of dealing with nutrition, infection, respiratory problems, hematology and surgery. Those trained Romanians will in turn train their countrymen in new technologies.

“Right now, I’m going around the Southland recruiting doctors and nurses,” Miller says.

Paris Via Van Nuys

French-born Veronique Lucchina met American-born actor Lloyd Sherr when both were vacationing in Rome 12 years ago. After their marriage, she moved to the San Fernando Valley from Paris when her son Raphael was 3 months old.

When they returned to France last summer, Raphael, now 10, was able to chat away in French. His mother credits his language skill to Lycee International de Los Angeles, a school that offers a high school diploma sanctioned by the state of California and a French Ministry of Education baccalaureate degree.

Graduates may go on to American colleges or universities, but they also may transfer to French institutions of higher learning, such as the Sorbonne.

This is not the high-profile, Los Angeles-based Lycee once attended by Jodie Foster. It’s a little-known but growing institution that started in a house in Van Nuys in 1978 and, according to founder-director Monique Mickus, has grown about 15% to 20% every year.

Like Veronique Sherr, Mickus married an American, one she met in Paris in the early ‘60s when he was stationed as an interpreter with the U. S. military at Fontainebleau.

Mickus came back to the Valley to raise their three children, and also wondered how she would help her children understand their other heritage.

She says she was unhappy with what she saw as a somewhat elitist atmosphere at the Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, so she found out, with her lawyer-husband, what was required to open her own lycee.

“We started with my three children and a friend’s two children in a properly zoned little house in the middle of Van Nuys. Now we have 350 children enrolled in six campuses, including the Van Nuys and Tarzana schools,” Mickus says. The 15-pupil classes are conducted in French and English.

Although the tuition varies from $4,200 to $5,200 a year, the French nationals are eligible for tuition help from the French government, and the American-born students are aided by what Mickus calls a “very aggressive scholarship committee. We wanted a diverse student body, not just poor French children and rich Americans.”

Anyone curious about the success of the program only need look to Mickus’ children. Two are graduates of the Sorbonne, now living and working in Paris. One recent Cal State Northridge graduate is going to work at the Lycee.

Thankful Moves

Looking for ways to give thanks on Thanksgiving? Contact the San Fernando Valley Council of Churches, the Red Cross, neighborhood assistance programs or the Salvation Army.

“It really helps if people who have a lot to be thankful for do their thanking by helping someone else,” says Karen Anderson, who is with the Salvation Army in Van Nuys.

At Salvation Army headquarters, 14917 Victory Blvd., Capt. James Halverson says they expect to serve about 200 meals the day before Thanksgiving at the annual community feast.

“We’re like other agencies. We can always use a helping hand from the community,” Anderson says.

Overheard

“I’m thankful the election’s over, thankful that the drought may soon be over and thankful that my credit is shot so I can’t overspend on Christmas presents.”

--Northridge woman to friend