The movers and shakers of San Diego in 1979

Al O'Brien

Everybody ought to own a town. So thought he and nine other investors when they plunked' down $1.7 million in August for the 250 acres that comprise the desert hamlet of Jacumba. Now they're pumping in $300,000 in renovations to convert it into a recreational refuge from urban hassles.

Tania Winter

Tania Winter

Acting on her belief that nuclear power is dangerous, this former social worker helped found the Community Energy Action Network in the spring of 1977. Now she's a director and spokeswoman for CEAN, which this past year organized several major rallies at San Onofre, staged the Jackson Browne antinuclear benefit, and testified before numerous public agencies.

James Schneider

James Schneider

This indefatigable downtown attorney and Gaslamp Quarter property owner (the Keating building at Fifth and F streets) founded Downtowners Ltd., the group which has been battllnq to promote the idea of a "Theater Square." As part of his strategy, Schneider leased the Lyceum Theater (formerly the Pussycat) from owner Vince Miranda, and hired Don Wartman to stage the highly praised Lyceum Follies there.

Chris Walker

Chris Walker

For the last year and a half she's directed San Diego CalPIRG, which provides San Diego consumers with such services as price surveys of solar energy businesses, credit unions, banking services, grocery prices, and more.

Art Cosey

By night he works the graveyard shift at a factory. By day he's the executive director of environmental watchdog Citizens Coordinate for Century 3. He also helped organize the Committee for Charter Protection for Parks, which for the last two years has fought to prevent the naval hospital from relocating in Florida Canyon.

Oscar Kaplan

Oscar Kaplan

San Diego's most prominent pollster, he's both a psychology professor at San Diego State and director of its 31-year-old Center for Survey Research. Everyone from Mayor Pete Wilson to the San Diego Zoo consults his private polling business regularly to find out what San Dieqans are thinking.

Gerry McAllister

Gerry McAllister

She become director of UCSD's Mandeville Gallery in 1977 and since then has brought in some of San Diego's most inspired exhibitions, including (this past year) a video installation on South America's Yanomami Indians, works by Douglas Huebler and Betye Saar, autochromes from the Albert Kahn collection, and a star-studded show on the "decorative impulse."

Tony Kampmann

Tony Kampmann

If you heard Ray Charles or the Knack or Oscar Peterson or the Crusaders or the Motels or Iggy Pop or B.B. King or one of the other numerous offerings at the Catamaran this year, it's because of this man, the hotel's hard-driving entertainment director.

Dr. Katherine Carson

Katherine Carson

In the early 1960s, she helped found the local Childbirth Education Association and worked to open up hospital delivery rooms to fathers last summer, as president of the San Diego Gynecological Society, she went on the warpath against what she considers a dangerous extreme — the growing popularity of home births.

Burt Turetzky

Burt Turetzky

His instrument is the contrabass, a growling, ungainly vehicle for producinq music, and this virtuoso, composer, and UCSD professor of music uplifts audiences both local and global as a highly respected proponent of "new music."

Marc Berman

Marc Berman

He's been promoting rock concerts in Son Diego for almost ten years, but 1979 was his biggest ever His Stadium Show on August 5 pulled in more than 50,000 people, the largest single sellout at the stadium. This year he also brought to town such stars as Kenny Loggins, Heart, Kiss, Linda Ronstadt, Rod Stewart, and Blondie.

Joe Stern

When he graduated from college in 1969, he was told he was too old to be useful. Since then, this Gray Panther, president of the Congress of San Diego County Seniors, and Tribune columnist, has been a fervent lobbyist for the senior movement.

Jim and Kathleen Kelley-Markham

In 1973, Jim Markham met Kathleen Kelly in an architectural history class at U.C. Berkeley, where both were introduced to the work of architect Irving Gill. Five years later their enthusiasm far his San Diego designs — and concern over their preservation — prompted them to form the Friends of Gill, the principal protagonist in the (unsuccessful) fight to save the Melville Klauber house.

Marilyn Marx

Marilyn Marx

One of the true believers in the future of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, she and her husband bought and renovated the 75-year-old Hotel Lester. She reaffirmed that faith by founding the Gaslamp Gazette newspaper, which has flourished under her direction since its premiere issue last October.

Warren Nielsen

This man stirred things up when he chanced upon on area near Highway 94 and Interstate 15 called Helix Heights. He figured it would serve a relocated Navy Hospital better than Florida Canyon. He tirelessly researched that argument, pled with the city council to block the idea, and when that failed, ran for mayor. (He lost, but the Helix idea is still alive.)

Gail Stoorza

The queen of public relations in San Diego, she's built up the Stoorza Company over the lost five years to its current reign as one of this town's largest PR firms, with such hefty clients as Centre City Development Corporation and the M.H. Golden Company.

Keith Martin

Keith Martin

As director of the San Diego Ballet Company, he brought to local stages such dance luminaries as Alicia Alonso, the Panovs, and Bella Lewltzky. But the board of directors didn't appreciate him, or so he charged in on angry press conference in July, when he quit. He's now with the Pittsburgh Ballet.

Grace and Virginia Kennedy (aka Poto and Cabengo)

They speak English. Even when they catapulted to international fame two years ago, they were only speaking an unusual blend of English and German, not some unique, privately developed tongue, researchers this year announced.

Rob Wellington Quigley

Rob Quigley

His novel designs for houses outrage some folks, draw raves from others, and prompted the San Diego chapter of the American Institute of Architects to honor him this year with a second consecutive merit award.

Kurt Benirschke

Kurt Benirschke

He is a medical doctor who has devoted his life to the salvation of wild species. Since he began directing research at the San Diego Zoo (almost exactly five years ago), he's built it up to the largest program of exotic-animal research in the world.

Greg Kahn

Greg Kahn

He's the director of the two-year-old San Diego International Film Festival, which this October served up to local film lovers another cinematic smorgasbord of taste and distinction.

Terry Cole-Whittaker

Terry Cole-Whittaker

Superminister. When she took over the La Jolla Church of Religious Science in 1977, Sunday attendance averaged about 50. Today more than 2000 people commonly flock to her three Sunday services, and she has plans for a 40-acre religious complex in Del Mar.

Raymond Rohm

La Mesa city fathers want him and his male and female nude dancers out. The club owner hasn't budged. The result has been one legal skirmish after another ever since the Classic Cat opened three years ago. The latest round is a $47 million lawsuit (against the city and La Mesa police) filed by Rohm's attorney this fall.

Ted Geisel

Bartholemew Cubbins, the Lorax, the Grinch, and the Cat in the Hat are among the offspring of this mild-mannered septuagenarian resident of La Jolla, who's written more than 40 children's books (with 80 million copies sold in 17 languages) under his famous pen name, Dr. Seuss.

Gabriel Campos

Gabriel Campos

Saving a pack of Cub Scouts caught in a riptide would be less trying than the personal maelstrom (complete with racial slurs and threats of bodily harm) weathered by this Chicano lifeguard from L.A. when he beat out local favorites and was topped this spring to head the county lifeguards.

Ballard Smith

Now president at the Padres, Ray Kroc's son-in-law has demonstrated a genius for aggravating San Diego officialdom over everything from city councilmembers' use of complimentary stadium seats to baseball parking fees.

Josie Scripps

Josie Scripps

Granddaughter of newspaper magnate E.W. Scrlpps, dairy farmer, and indomitable rockhound, she served as a curator at the Natural History Museum for about six years (until trouble erupted between her and the new museum administration and almost single-handedly developed the mineralogy exhibit which opened last spring.

Christopher D. Sickels

A homegrown wheeler-dealer, he's developed more than $150 million worth of office parks, apartments and single-family units (among them for instance the Alvarado Medical Center and many of Its surrounding dwellings). This summer he also bought downtown's U.S. Grant Hotel and is pouring in about $34 million to restore, refurbish, and enlarge it.

Thomas Day

He replaced Brage Golding as president of San Diego State University and touched off controversy by targeting a number of academic departments for teacher cuts without first consulting the faculty. More recently, he's won kudos, however, for his drive for more community support of the university.

Jerry Coleman

Jerry Coleman

Formerly the voice of the Padres, he's supposed to be the brains in 1980 as the ballclub's new manager. During the Fifties, he played second base on the world champion New York Yankees; during the last eight seasons, the play-by-play announcer bestowed on San Diego baseball fans his notorious "Colemanisms."

Alex Drehsler

Alex Drehsler

This year the San Diego Union's Latin American reportorial whiz covered the revolution in Nicaragua; recounted the tense final hours of Tijuana's ill-fated newspaper, ABC; documented links between a high-ranking Mexican law enforcer and charges of torture and extortion; and reported that hundreds of Baja police were driving stolen American vehicles.

lrma Castro

Born and raised three blocks from the Chicano Federation's offices, today she's the director. (She also helped to organize it in 1968.) She came to the job with experience teaching Mexican-American studies at UCSD and with a record of fifteen years of community activism.

Gale Fox and Larry Foreman

Gale Fox and Larry Foreman

Promoters of pedestrian power, they started leading walkers through Son Diego's byways in 1977. Since then their Walkabout groups

have covered everything from the back alleys of Tijuana to the beaches of Del Mar.

Payne Johnson

Payne Johnson

He's a veteran ad man who found a dramatic way to shake up his life by starting Son Diego's newest and slickest magazine, San Diego Home/Garden. He's editor-in-chief and publisher of this source for finding the finest hot tubs, growing the best herbs, touring the classiest homes.

Alice Barnes

She's 72 years old, but she could give lessons in radical politicking to college students. These days most likely to be found picketing in support of the current lettuce boycott, she's also lent her support to such causes as the American Indian Movement and the Campaign for Economic Democracy over the last few years.

Joe Yamada

Few people have had as much impact on the very look of San Diego as this landscape architect, whose projects over the years have included all the port district's beautification works, Sea World, UCSD, San Diego City College, Miramar College, and EI Cajon's Superblock, to name a few.

The Gang of Five

The Gang of Five

Craig Fenech, Gene Iredale, Juanita Brooks, Barry D. Utsinger, and Craig E. Weinerman thought the U.S. attorney's office was all but ignoring complaints by Mexican nationals of maltreatment by Border Patrol agents. So these five Federal Defenders, acting on their own, called a dramatic press conference this summer to make their allegations.

Maudeline Kelley

Maudeline Kelley

She thought she was retiring when she moved to Son Diego in 1972, but found she couldn't stop teaching classical music to children. In fact, with the fruits of her labors here, she started the 30- to 35-member Southeast San Diego Community Youth Orchestra, which has been performing for audiences all aver the county.

AI Best

Police harassment of homosexuals this spring made him fighting mod. So he threw his hat into the political ring and became San Diego's first acknowledged gay city council candidate.

Noel Quintana

Because he believes outraged consumers should retaliate, he started a service which he now calls "lemon aid." In the year and a half since its inception, he's spent thousands of hours picketing with his "clients" (usually aggrieved customers of car dealerships), and helping them to win thousand's of dollars in compensation.

Ernest Hahn

Ernest Hahn

He built the Fashion Valley shopping center and University Town Centre. And if all goes according to the elaborate municipal plans, he'll develop the shopping center core of Mayor Pete Wilson's vision of a revitalized downtown San Diego.

Harold Kean

Does anyone in town not recognize the face of San Diego's most venerable newsman? (He marked his 30th anniversary with Channel 8 television this August.) Or his by-line? (He worked on local newspapers far 15 years before throwing in his lot with electronic journallsm, and has written for San Diego Magazine since 1962.)

Dan Coryell

Dan Coryell

The former coach of the San Diego State Aztecs took over the helm of the floundering Chargers midway through the 1978 season. Under his guidance, the Chargers have become one of the top three teams in the NFL, utilizing on awesome passing offense dubbed "Air Coryell."

Jesus Blancornelas

Jesus Blancornelas

He made waves on both sides of the border with his independent Tijuana daily, ABC. In fact, he rocked so many boats that on November 2, Baja governor Roberto de la Madrid (under the thin veil of a labor dispute) had the scrappy paper closed down.

Jane and Larry Booth

Jane and Larry Booth

They're the curators of 140,000 photographic negatives documenting more than 100 years of San Diego history. (Title Insurance donated the collection to the San Diego Historical Society this year.) The husband-and-wife team has worked for yeoas with the historical collection, among the largest of its kind in the world .

Ron Mires

Ron Mires

A few months after he become news director at KGTV Channel 10 in 1973, the station's news show shot past Channel 8's to top the ratings race. Through the loss of popular anchorman Harold Green, through all the vicissitudes of TV news since then, the station has staved in the top slot under Mires's guidance .

Richard Butcher

Richard Butcher

He's more than just a general practitioner in Southeast San Diego. He thinks doctors also have a responsibility to their communities; his own contributions have ranged from his presidency of the Son Diego chapter of the Black Doctor's Association to his work with community projects like sickle cell anemia screenings.

George Pardee

He's built an awful lot of houses — most of Mira Mesa, for example. And he's supposed to be building a whole more in the coming years as the chief developer for the downtown redevelopment Marina Housing Project.

Richard O. Cessna, Sr.

Kidco, the celebrated manure-selling. gopher-killing, town-buying Ramona company, is run almost entirely, he insists, by his four children (soon to be immortalized in a Warner Brothers is about the kids' battle with bureaucracy.) The camera-shy Cessna filed personal bankruptcy this spring, but Kidco's gross income was projected to top $450,000).

Danah Fayman

This gracious La Jolla grande dame has labored tirelessly for 20 years on behalf of the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (whose board of directors she now heads). As such, she spearheaded the museum's most recent fundraising drive to finance the manor renovation completed this past spring.