< — Schools and Churches

When David Worsfold was mustered out of the Navy in 1945, he returned to a vastly altered Southern California: Population boomed; housing was scarce; families were sleeping in parks.

But jobs could be found at Douglas Aircraft or MGM. The Palms Chamber, quiescent during the war, was resurrected, with Worsfold as its indefatigable secretary.

Two demographic changes marked Palms: (1) An area-wide zone change from single-family housing to apartments in the flatlands (between 1950 and 1970 the number of multiples increased by 573%) and (2) the rise of Westside Village, Rancho Park, and Cheviot Hills as prime residential areas with active, home-owning, civic-minded boosters intent on improving their tree-shrouded communities.

Civic activism dwindled in “Old Palms” but thrived in its hinterland: Allen Nelson was the last Chamber president we know about (1967). The Palms Women’s Club faded away after 1983, and its clubhouse was turned into a church (now it’s a party-supply store).

Homeowners formed the Westside Village Civic Association in 1962, with Robert Bowen as president. Other officers were Mike Root, Everett Wallace, Marjorie Barthlein, Dorothy Des Baillets, Helen Bloomer, Paul Cramer, and Charles Stahl.

In 1983, a nonprofit group called The Community tried to “humanize neighborhoods by helping apartment dwellers get to know one another.” With no luck in Palms. “It is basically a bedroom community of single people,” volunteer Janet Merritt told Mary Curtius of the Times.

All that irked Neil Goldstein, who wrote to the Times about his neighborhood, Westside Village: “Close to 40% of the Palms area is single-family homes. . . . It is probably one of the best examples of a successful mixed ethnic area in the city. . . . The next time reporters of yours come to my community, let them rid themselves of . . . bias. . . . They might find a diverse and interesting neighborhood — one like Palms.”

Another Village resident, Jeanne Parker, remembered the late 1950s and the daily stops of the Helms bread man, the Adohr milkman, and the fruit man.

1949: New-Fangled 'Supermarket.' Opening of the Ralphs market on the southwest corner of Sepulveda and National was a highlight of November 1949.

“There are a multitude of checking-out counters which are specially designed so that it is not necessary to lift heavy-laden baskets up onto the counter,” the store boasted. The parking lot “is flood-lighted on Friday nights when the store is open.”

Ralphs moved after 1973 to a new shopping center across Sepulveda; the original building later became a Ross Dress for Less.

The rows of buildings are UCLA student housing, the space between them left vacant for the San Diego Freeway.

Note remaining farm at Bentley and National (lower left). (Spence Air Photo.)