In Plummer Park

By MICHAEL SZYMANSKI

March 25, 1990 12 AM PT

Szymanski is a free-lance writer based in West Hollywood

A month ago, the old women sitting on the park benches would have been hassled for spare change. The children who played soccer would have had to maneuver around men who slept all day in muddy sleeping bags.

But things have changed in Plummer Park. Today the women exchange news of the day unmolested. And now the soccer field is being used for what it was intended. The park is once again a haven for residents of the area with the recent passage of a strictly enforced “no camping” law, the eviction of a homeless feeding program and the closure of a nearby 24-hour hot dog stand.

“This is simply a matter of the community taking back the park from vagrants,” said Ed Riney of the East End Community Action group that lobbied the West Hollywood City Council for the changes. “It wasn’t as dramatic as taking down the Berlin Wall, but for us it was reversing a really bad direction that our park was heading (in).”

According to park director Laura Mehegan, the number of homeless people in the park has dropped from 2,070 in January to 280 last month.

A sense of community has returned to the site. On a typical Saturday, neighbors haggle with a man selling fruit from his van, and not far away the Audubon Society sells bird-watching kits.

Dozens of serious-faced men, mostly Soviet immigrants, play rummy and dominoes at picnic tables, and familiar television actors pound tennis balls and wave to fans from the courts. Children lug cellos for the Pioneer Youth Orchestra rehearsal at one end of the park. At the other end, men in pastel sweat suits warm up for their “Stretchercise for Gay Men” class.

A few of the homeless can still be seen, one sharing a bench with the Russian grandmothers wearing brightly covered scarfs.

But it is once again the neighborhood’s park, and many who use it are quick to say how much it has improved now that most of the homeless have left.

“We love the park, we take it back, it was not pleasant before,” said Charles Aniell, a 77-year-old Russian who takes English classes at the park.

Not everyone is a fan of the changes or the motives for them. Rene Seidel, an activist with the West Hollywood Homeless Project, said the park was a safe, central place to serve meals to the homeless, and the lack of the site means “we can’t find them to help them.” Most of Plummer Park’s homeless have moved to nearby Poinsettia and Wattles Garden parks in Hollywood. “It’s a basic meanness and hysteria from the neighborhood,” said Ted Landreth of the Greater West Hollywood Food Coalition, which was kicked out of the park after serving 250 meals a day for nearly two years. “They didn’t want to have to look these people in the eyes, so they just moved them out of sight.” The nonprofit food coalition now serves meals a few blocks away at Sycamore Avenue and Romaine Street in Los Angeles, but fewer people are taking part, Landreth said.

The homeless problem is still discussed in the park as much as the historic events going on in the homelands of its patrons. “They don’t have somewhere to go and don’t bother me,” said Esther Mezhitrsky, in the park with her 6-year-old granddaughter. “I come here to talk to my people about our homeland,” said the woman, who fled Kiev, a Soviet city, in 1980. “God Bless America we have this park.”

Today the large community of mostly elderly Soviet immigrants who frequent the park, nicknamed “Little Gorky Park,” is more evident than ever. “Sitting down in a park and taking a load off their feet were part of their culture in Russia, that’s why they’re here,” said Senior Center director Vivian Sauer.

The park also attracts Israelis, Mexicans and Iranians. “This park is more of a United Nations than any other park in Los Angeles,” said Ruth Egger, the Senior Center’s activity director.

The 5.3-acre, 121-year-old park--bordered by Santa Monica Boulevard, Fuller Avenue, Vista Street and Fountain Avenue--is one of the county’s busiest parks for its size with more than 16,000 people having used it in February, said Mehegan. It has eight buildings, tennis and basketball courts, a playground and a bird sanctuary.

To celebrate Plummer Park’s rebirth, the West Hollywood City Council held its meeting in the middle of the park last week at a rededication ceremony of Fiesta Hall. The 40-year-old hall, recently renovated at a cost of $320,000, has featured performances by Jack Benny, Irving Berlin, Zubin Mehta and Ira Gershwin with guests including Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Judy Garland and the Marx brothers.

“I tell the children they are standing on hallowed ground here,” said Ruth McLaughlin, director of the California Junior Symphony, which has held free performances at the park for more than 50 years.

Historically, the park has been known as a gathering place for travelers since it was deeded to John and Cecelia Plummer in 1869. Large barbecue parties with well-known guests were held at the area known as the Pioneer Fiesta Center. Eugene Plummer lost the land and the county foreclosed on it but let him live at the park until his death in 1943. The Plummer House stood on the land from 1878 until it burned in 1981.

Today parties continue at the site, with Russian celebrations, Easter egg hunts and jazz festivals planned by the park staff of nine. Classes include cake decorating, armchair exercises, ballroom dancing and Soviet drama classes.

A tiny area set off by a black iron fence is a bird sanctuary kept up by the Los Angeles Audubon Society, which has a bookstore in the park. Owls, hummingbirds, hawks and falcons can be found there, the only danger being a few scavenging cats.

“Not too long ago, I had to walk over homeless people sleeping in the courtyard to get to the front door,” said Charles Harper, Audubon bookstore manager. “The homeless used to throw trash from the food program over the fence into the sanctuary for us to clean up.”

The tennis courts, built in the 1930s, attracted every major athlete and celebrity of the day, according to Oscar Ringel, who has lobbied for 30 years for park improvements.

Celebrities spotted on the courts have included Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Donna Mills, George Peppard and Stacy Keach. Director Paul Mazursky plays there at least three times a week. It is said that people have left screenplays near his tennis bag hoping he would read them.

One of the most talked-about park regulars is tennis player Richard Yarbrough, 65, of Culver City, who lost both his legs to poor circulation. Zipping around the courts in his wheelchair, Yarbrough is a good match for many players at the park.

He thinks the community’s effort to reclaim the park was well worth it. “If you don’t take care of what you’ve got, then it gets taken away from you,” Yarbrough said. “I commend those who have taken back the park and cleaned it up. People are devoted to this park.”

Rod McCary, a character actor who started playing tennis at Plummer Park 20 years ago, sees the park as a valuable part of the community where the ebb and flow of life can be viewed from a bench. “In this park you see a microcosm of what is going on in the world.

“There’s a mesh of life here,” McCary said. “I’ve watched people at the tennis courts grow old and join the codgers playing cards.”