When She Starts to Sketch, She’s Real Hard to Catch

You would almost expect Barbara J. Denny of La Palma to saunter in wearing chaps, a set of jingling spurs and carrying a pair of smoking six-shooters like a gunfighter of yesteryear.

She didn’t get the reputation as the fastest draw in the West for nothing, you know, even though she hardly fits the bill, considering she’s a grandmother.

Actually, Denny borrowed that description to fit her work as a caricaturist who can sketch people at the rate of one a minute. “I like to do things fast,” she said.

The one-time medical secretary has been entertaining folks at parties and trade shows with her zapid fire craft for 20 years. “I’m really more of an entertainer than an artist,” said Denny, 56, who sometimes takes grandchildren wih her on assignments in Orange and Los Angeles counties, as wellas in Las Vegas.

She has also worked in Chicago, Hawaii, New Orleans and Washington, among other places.

Although she works “about every other day,” she finds time to visit hospitals, such as the Long Beach Naval Hospital where she moves quickly from bed to bed, sketching patients and leaving them with a memory.

“It’s a break in the day for them,” she said, “and it gives them a laugh. It also make me feel good.”

Besides likenesses, her sketches are capped with sayings such as “Cool Charlie” or “Rambunctious Robert.”

She said after penning the name puns, “People believe I’m a psychic because they think I make a

connection. They ask me, ‘How did you know that?’ It’s really not a secret,” she said. “But it takes brain work. I learn a lot from their appearance, comments or whatever. I’m happy when they agree with it.”

Drawing older men gives her the most fun. “Their faces are so interesting, with lines of life and experience etched in them,” she said.

Denny says she indulges women. “They take much more time to be beautiful.”

A self-taught artist, Denny also dabbles in oil paintings, many reflecting her caricature style. The paintings hang throughout her home.

Most of her assignments these days are at trade shows, although she also appears(at conventions, shopping malls, grand openings and parties where the personality sketches are given free to guests as promotions from the company hosting the event.

Her fast-draw reputation got her another honor. She is the only caricaturist to be inducted into the Left Handers Hall of Fame.

A self-proclaimed eccentric because she doesn’t conform to her age, Marla Gitterman, 74, of Laguna Niguel, was named Miss Senior California from among 24 competitors last weekend before a standing-room-only crowd on the Queen Mary. Her next stop is Miss Senior America in Atlantic City.

“I’m surprised,” Gitterman said, but added that the importance of the 60-and-older beauty contest is to change the image of older women from a “Where’s-the-Beef” person to a woman of elegance.

She said her role model was her mother, Myrtle Ulriksen, who lived to 100, was called the “Flying Grandmother” and was studying computers when she died.

Like her mother, she said, “I don’t conform to what people would think a woman of 74 would be. I live for today and tomorrow, and live it fully.”

Interrupting a telephone interview, Gitterman said, “I have to go. I’m leaving to take a four-mile run with my German shepherd.”

It was 35 years ago when Philip R. Cantwell, now 60, was hurt playing football for Notre Dame University and fell in love and married Catherine, now 58, his special duty nurse. They’ve since had eight children.

Well, as Cantwell tells it, “Catherine is a fine nurse and a good role model to the children.” Sure enough. Four of their five daughters are nurses. Susan, 21, is the most recent to graduate from nursing school. The others are Mary, 31, Patricia, 30, and Colleen, 29. The fifth daughter, Jane, 25, is a Cal State Long Beach business graduate. Sons Philip Jr., 35, and John, 34, own a sports medicine center in the county, and the

youngest, Thomas, 23, attends Saddleback College. “I’m very proud.” said Cantwell, in an obvious understatement.

Irvine chemist Richard L. Sanford, 33, spends three hours daily driving the 120-mile round trip from Vista in San Diego County with seven passengers who pay a monthly fee. But they get more than the ride. Sanford has a mobile telephone that allows him to call Metro Traffic for the latest advisories.

“They’re actually paying for my van and the gas I use,” said Sanford, a true entrepreneur who got the phone installed free on a trial basis from the company that sells them in exchange for advertising the phone setup in his van.

The phone is great, said Sanford, who wishes more people would car-pool to relieve the daily congestion he faces on the freeway.

Acknowledgments--Richard Bishop Jr., Gary Carter, Christopher Cole, Sara King Freathy, Janice Hobson and Gary Miller, all Sunny Hills High School graduates who have made significant contributions to society since graduation, are first to have their name plaques installed at the Fullerton school’s new Walk of Fame.