Pacoima, Los Angeles

Pacoima is a district in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California.

It is bordered by the Los Angeles districts of Mission Hills on the west, Arleta on the south, Sun Valley on the southeast, Lake View Terrace on the northeast, and by the city of San Fernando on the north. Major thoroughfares include San Fernando Road and Laurel Canyon and Van Nuys Boulevards. The Golden State and Ronald Reagan freeways run through the district.

History

Pacoima's first inhabitants were the semi-nomadic Tongva and Tataviam Native American tribes; the name Pacoima in fact comes from the Tataviam language and translates to "the entrance". In 1797, Spanish colonists built the nearby Mission San Fernando Rey, but the Pacoima area remained without permanent settlement until 1887. In that year, former Republican California State Assemblyman and California State Senator Charles MacLay purchased 56,000 acres (227 km²) in the area with a loan of $117,500 from a friend, U.S. Senator Leland Stanford (president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, former Governor of California, and founder of Stanford University). MacLay proceeded to subdivide the tract into agricultural parcels, most of which were used for the production of Southern California staples such as citrus, nuts, beans, wheat, and vegetables. As was the case in most of the San Fernando Valley, the lure of plentiful, cheap water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct proved irresistible to Pacoima's farmers, and the district was annexed by Los Angeles in 1921.

During World War II, the desperate need for housing for workers at Lockheed's main plant in neighboring Burbank led to the construction of the San Fernando Gardens housing project. By the 1950s, the rapid suburbanization of the San Fernando Valley had come to Pacoima, and the area changed almost overnight from a dusty farming area to a bedroom community for the fast-growing industries in Los Angeles and nearby Burbank and Glendale, with transportation access provided by the Golden State Freeway. While racial segregation barred African-Americans from most of the Valley, Pacoima was home to a large black population until the 1990s, in addition to whites and Latinos. Industrial decline, capped by the demise of Lockheed's Burbank operations in the 1990s, led to the departure of most of the white and black population from the 1970s onward; by the 1980s, the area was majority-Latino. Since the late 1970s, it has been one of the poorest districts in the city of Los Angeles, with San Fernando Gardens a particular locus of poverty and crime. However, the district has received a great deal of attention from the Los Angeles Police Department since the arrival of new chief William J. Bratton in 2001: according to LAPD statistics, the area has seen the largest decrease in crime during that period of any of LAPD's patrol areas.

Notoriety

Pacoima was thrust into national headlines on January 31, 1957, when three students on the playground of Pacoima Junior High School were among the eight persons killed as the result of a midair collision between a four-engine Douglas DC-7B airliner and a United States Air Force Northrop F-89J Scorpion jet fighter in the skies above nearby Sunland.

The DC-7B, earmarked for delivery to Continental Airlines, took off from the Santa Monica Airport at 10:15 a.m. on its first functional test flight, with a crew of four Douglas test personnel aboard. Meanwhile, in Palmdale to the north, the two-man F-89J fighter jet took off at 10:50 a.m. on a similar test flight, one that involved a check of its on-board radar equipment. Both aircraft were performing their individual tests at an altitude of 25,000 feet in clear skies over the San Fernando Valley when, at about 11:18 a.m., a high-speed, near-head-on midair collision occurred. Investigators were later able to determine that the two aircraft converged at a point in the sky approximately one to two miles northeast of the Hansen Dam spillway.

Following the collision, Curtiss Adams, the radarman aboard the eastbound twin-engine F-89J Scorpion, was able to bail out of the stricken fighter jet and, despite incurring serious burns, parachute to a landing in Burbank. However, the fighter jet’s pilot, Roland E. Owen, died when the aircraft plummeted in flames into La Tuna Canyon in the Verdugo Mountains.

The DC-7B, with a portion of its left wing sheared off and while raining debris onto the neighborhoods below, remained airborne for a few minutes, then rolled to the left and began a steepening, high-velocity dive earthward over Pacoima. The aircraft broke up at about 500 to 1,000 feet above the ground and seconds later the hurtling wreckage slammed onto the grounds of the Pacoima Congregational Church and the adjacent playground of Pacoima Junior High School, killing all four Douglas crewmen aboard. On the school playground, where some 220 boys were just ending their outdoor athletics activities, two students -- Ronnie Brann, 13, and Robert Zallan, 12, -- were struck and killed by flying portions of wreckage and debris from the crashing airliner. A third gravely injured student, Evan Elsner, 12, died two days later in a local hospital. An estimated 74 additional students on the school playground suffered injuries ranging from minor to critical.

The collision was blamed on pilot error -- the failure of both aircraft crews to exercise proper “see and avoid” procedures regarding other aircraft while operating under visual flight rules (VFR). The crash also prompted the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to set restrictions on all aircraft test flights, both military and civilian, requiring that they be made over open water or specifically approved sparsely populated areas.

The Pacoima crash is referenced in the 1987 film La Bamba, a biographical account of the short life of veteran rock ’n’ roll singer Ritchie Valens. Valens was a 15-year-old student at Pacoima Junior High School at the time of the disaster, but was away from the school campus, attending the funeral of his grandfather, on the day of the crash. Ironically, Valens, along with fellow musicians Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper, along with pilot Roger Peterson, would perish just over two years later in the crash of a chartered Beechcraft Bonanza near Mason City, Iowa in the early morning hours of February 3, 1959.

Pacoima Junior High School underwent a name change, to Pacoima Middle School, in 1992.

Additionally, the Black Widows motorcycle gang in the Clint Eastwood movie "Every Which Way But Loose" appear to be from Pacoima.

Education

Pacoima residents are zoned to the following Los Angeles Unified School District and other charter schools: Sharp Elementary School, Pacoima Charter Elementary School, Maclay Middle School, Hillary T. Broadous Elementary School, Vaughn Charter School, Telfair Elementary School, Fenton Charter Primary Center (part of Lake View Terrace), Maclay Primary Center, Pacoima Middle School, Discovery Charter Preparatory School, San Fernando High School, Los Angeles Mission College and Bert Corona Charter School.

|}== Famous natives == Well-known Pacoima natives include:

• Bobby Chacon, world champion featherweight boxer
• Andraé Edward Crouch (born July 1, 1942), gospel musician, recording artist, songwriter, arranger, and producer, was a key figure in the Jesus Music movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• Anthony Davis (born May 21, 1952) known as AD, was an American football running back
• Leonardo DiCaprio, noted film and television actor
• Dobie Gray (born July 26, 1940?) is an African American musician / singer best known for his song "Drift Away", which was one of the biggest hits of 1973 and still remains a staple of radio airplay.
• Howard Huntsberry, Solo R&B Singer, member of the group Klique, Actor (Jackie Wilson in La Bamba)
• William H. Marshall, actor, director, and opera singer
• Cheech Marin, Chicano comedian and actor
• Gary Nathaniel Matthews Sr (b. July 5, 1950 in San Fernando, California) is a former outfielder in Major League Baseball.
• Ronald Oden, Mayor of Palm Springs, California
• Mary Helen Ponce, writer
• Alex Padilla, State Senator
• James "J-Ro" Robinson, rapper and member of "Tha Alkaholiks". J-Ro is releasing an album called "B-Boy Funk"
• Sal Rodriguez Writer, Comedian, Emcee/Host, Humorist
• Ese Santo, Chicano Christian Rapper
• Crystal Scales, voice actor known for her recurring roles in The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Static Shock and The PJs.
• Billie Thomas (originally William Thomas, Jr.) (March 12, 1931–October 10, 1980) was an American child actor best remembered for portraying the character of Buckwheat in the Our Gang (Little Rascals)
• Ritchie Valens, rock and roll singer
• Jacob Vargas, film and television actor
• Charles White is a former professional American football athlete. He had a distinguished college career and later played in the NFL for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams
• George Antonio Lopez, comedian
• Brissa Magana, Pac- town original M!LF, Social Butterfly,

Business

Juicy Couture, an apparel company, was founded in Pacoima.

External links

• Pacoima information site
• Tongva ("Gabrielino") History
• Tataviam website
• A virtual walking tour with activists from Pacoima Beautiful, Grist Magazine

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