Friday, November 30, 2001 10:54 PM
The Fallen Journalists Memorial, created by the Los Angeles Press Club, will be formally dedicated in its new home at California State University Northridge on November 27 at 10 a.m., and club members are welcome to attend.
Cynthia Rawitch, Chair of the Department of Journalism has overseen the installation of bronze and wood memorial in Manzanita Hall, the new Arts, Media, and Communication building. The plaque is a memorial to 17 California journalists who lost their lives in pursuit of the news.
The journalists named on the memorial represent newspapers and magazines, radio and television. They covered war and rebellion, civil disturbances, traffic and sports. They include Tom Treanor and Frank Prist, killed during World War II; Dial Torgerson and Richard Cross, killed in Honduras in 1983; and Los Angeles helicopter pilots Francis Gary Powers and Bruce Wayne.
During the rededication ceremony, an eighteenth name will be added, that of James Bertken, a Los Angeles Daily News reporter who was swept overboard while covering a sports fishing story off the Central California coast in 1995.
The Memorial was originally mounted on the fireplace when the LA Press Club had a building on Vermont Avenue. The Memorial moved to City Hall until the 1994 earthquake, and then was in storage.
“The Department of Journalism and the University are proud to have been chosen as the memorial’s permanent home. I believe it is fitting that this rich tradition of great California journalism has come to our campus,” says Rawitch.
Former KNBC anchor Jess Marlow, now a host of KCET’s “Life and Times,” was the master of ceremonies at the original installation in 1979 and has agreed to serve in that role again. RSVP by Nov. 20 to (818) 677-3135 to arrange parking or transportation.
