Page 2 February 17, 2022 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
City Council Looks at DEI
Committee, Top Golf, Smoking
in Town and Downtown Dining
By Liz Spear
The El Segundo City Council Council
fielded several public comments on the city’s
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee
Tuesday night and tackled a range of legislative
business, including a request from Top Golf
to remove a par-4 hole and replace it with
two par-3 holes. In addition, City Council
addressed mask mandates, smoking in the
city and recognized the death of former city
employee Jack Wayt, who passed on February
1. Wayt started his career with the El Segundo
Police Department in 1968 and retired as its
police chief in 2005. He temporarily served
as city manager in 2008, filling in the gap
as one city manager announced his departure
and the city searched for a new one.
On the heels of its Public Safety Report
presented to the council at its February 1
meeting, the DEI Committee garnered several
comments during the Public Comment portion
at the beginning of the meeting. Two residents
questioned why a resident with clear disbelief
in the committee’s mission had a seat on it
and gave examples of his behavior they view
as disruptive and counter to the committee’s
work. One resident told the council the
individual says that “systemic racism is not
a problem” and that this committee member
pushes a Larry Elder film that showcases
conservative views. Another resident called
out this committee member’s behavior at a
DEI Committee meeting, noting that this
committee member “cut and paste half a
dozen topics from the Bible” and just kept
putting them into the chat feature of the
meeting. She said he “is very off-topic or
hostile” and uses “divert and distract” tactics
to impede the work of the DEI Committee.
Residents also expressed displeasure over the
amount of time it is taking the city council
to fill two seats on the DEI committee that
have been open since summer.
Later in the meeting, in response to some
of the public comments made about the
DEI committee, Mayor Drew Boyles asked
Deputy City Manager Barbara Voss to speak
See City Council, page 10
Travel
Obituaries
Our beloved father, John “Jack”
Owen Wayt, age 74, passed away
February 1, 2022 surrounded by
his family in Prescott, AZ after
courageously battling Alzheimer’s.
He is survived by his wife, Kathy;
children, Jake, Jena, Chel’sea,
Petra, and Cayt’lan; sister, Marnie
Lucchini, brother in law, Ray
Lucchini; brother and sister in
law; Russ & Sue Wolf; brother
in law, Scott Waller and four
grandchildren, Teagan, Gavin, Leo, and Olive.
Jack was born December 17, 1947, in Torrance,
CA where he lived his formative years. He was
a 1965 graduate of Torrance High School and
attended El Camino College. He received his
bachelor’s degree from Cal State Dominguez
Hills and his master’s degree from California
Polytechnic State University, Pomona.
In September 1966, he joined the United
States Coast Guard as an active reservist and
was assigned to serve with the Coast Guard
Ceremonial Honor Guard.
Jack graduated first in his academy class
with the Los Angeles Police Department. He
began his 38-year journey of service with the
El Segundo Police Department and eventually
retired as Chief of Police in 2006.
After his retirement, Jack worked as an
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In our February 10 issue, sports section,
we stated that Jake Meyerson got a goal in
the game against Lawndale, but it was his
brother Mikah Meyerson who scored in the
second half. We regret the error.
– HM •
War and Peace in Jutland
Article and photos
by Ben & Glinda Shipley
If you only count history when it’s written
down on paper, then you could say that the
saga of western Scandinavia started far away,
across the gray-blue waters of the North Sea,
at the Lindisfarne Priory on Holy Island off the
coast of northeast Britain. Admittedly, biased
Anglo-Saxon monks wrote the book, but on
June 8, 793 AD, those innocent priors glanced
out their windows to find open boatloads of
fiery, helmeted savages headed their way. The
Vikings spent the next few days slaughtering
the godly, enslaving every woman of childbearing
age they could catch, and sailing off
with every bright, shiny object they could carry.
And that was just the beginning of the Viking
Age. Over the next 250-odd years, the ancestral
residents of coastal Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden would alternately terrorize, trade with,
and conquer the European world all the way
down the Atlantic coast and into the Mediterranean
as far as Constantinople. With their
long, shallow-bottomed vessels, rivers were
no problem either, as the residents of Paris,
Kiev, and central Germany soon found out.
By the time the Vikings lost their mojo, their
name would translate into several languages as
a shorthand for all the evils of pagan piracy.
Fast forward to August 22, 1707, and Sweden
is a world-class military power locked in a
perpetual squabble with its Scandinavian kin.
After decades of Swedes bullying Russians,
Poles, Danes, and Norwegians, the entire
continent of Europe (other than the French)
has had enough. So what does King Charles
XII do? 105 years before Napoleon and 234
years before Adolf Hitler repeat the same grievous
blunder, he invades central Russia. After
two exhausting years of fighting, it takes less
than a day at the Battle of Poltava to wipe the
Swedish Empire off the map.
Fast forward again to 1888, and the Swedish
magnate Alfred Nobel is sitting down to
breakfast, when he reads his own obituary in
a French newspaper (clearly an editor’s error).
At this point, Alfred is world-famous as the
Copenhagen—HC Andersen’s Little Mermaid, or Ellen Price, the beautiful ballerina who sat in for her.
Correction
investigator in government security
at The Aerospace Corporation in
El Segundo.
Jack was then asked to return
to the city for six months as interim
City Manager, a position in
which he ended up holding from
2008-2011.
As a long time resident of El Segundo,
Jack was heavily involved
in the community and loved the
game of baseball. He coached
the 1974 Babe Ruth baseball World Series
Championship team. Post retirement he acted
as assistant coach to the ESHS Eagles varsity
team, alongside his dear friend, John Stevenson.
Jack and his wife, Kathy eventually relocated
to Prescott, AZ alongside his sister
Marnie and brother in law, Ray. In his free
time, Jack enjoyed surfing, playing in a senior
softball league, getting together for a monthly
breakfast with ESPD retirees living in Prescott,
fly-fishing in Montana, spending time at a local
lake with his black Labrador Gracie, traveling,
and spending time with his family.
He unconditionally loved and supported his
children. From games to graduations, he never
missed a moment. His legacy will forever
live on in our hearts as we cling to precious
memories of a life well lived. •
“My father didn’t tell me how to live;
he lived, and let me watch him do it.”
– Clarence Budington Kelland
See Travel, page 11