The Weekly Newspaper of El Segundo
Herald Publications - El Segundo, Hawthorne, Lawndale & Inglewood Community Newspapers Since 1911 - (310) 322-1830 - Vol. 110, No. 14 - April 8, 2021
Inside
This Issue
Certified & Licensed
Professionals.....................14
Classifieds............................4
Crossword/Sudoku.............4
Entertainment......................3
Legals............................12-13
Letters...................................2
Pets......................................15
Police Reports.....................2
Real Estate.....................9-11
Sports....................................3
Weekend
Forecast
Experience New Ideas at ESMoA
The team behind ESMoA. From left to right: Holly Crawford, Eugenia Torre, Barbara Boehm. To find out more about ESMoA, see the story in the yellow box below.
The El Segundo Rotary Club
Continues its Philanthropic Mission
By Duane Plank
Like nearly every other service organization
in the United States, the El Segundo Rotary
Club (ESRC) and their myriad in-person outreach
Experience Art at ESMoA
By Kiersten Vannest
“The nice thing is, you never know
what you’re getting.” Stated Barbara
Boehm, director of operations at the El
Segundo Museum of Art (ESMoA), a
public nonprofit. Hailing from Berlin,
her background is in architecture, but
now she handles all things informational
regarding ESMoA, what they call an art
lab here in El Segundo. She explains the
innovative nature of the small museum
located on Main Street.
Boehm and her “small, but mighty”
team, Holly Crawford and Eugenia Torre,
oversee the museum and its exhibits, programs,
education, outreach, and beyond.
At ESMoA, the shows or exhibits
are called “experiences.” They utilize
all the senses and are thematic and
conceptual. To enter one of their experiences
is to see the world in a new way,
consider a perspective you hadn’t, and
hopefully, learn something about the world
and yourself.
“We’re truly an art laboratory,” says
Eugenia Torre, “We test things, and experiment,
and things stick, and they grow.”
Torre came from Italy and helped head
ESMoA’s film festival, which incidentally
became an international film festival as
they received submissions from forty-nine
different countries last year.
Past experiences include their ongoing
“Living Library,” where real-life people
offer their time as living books, open to
answering questions, teaching, and just
chatting. Guests have the chance to “check
activities were severely impacted by
the mandated lockdowns after the COVID-19
scourge hit California more than a year ago.
When business lockdowns and curtailments
started to surface in the Spring of 2020, the
Rotary Club had to pivot and explore innovative
avenues to provide their services and expertise
to local club members. Currently tallying out
at more than 50 and dealing with the physical,
emotional, and economic fallout created by a
once-in-a-lifetime (we can only hope) pandemic.
The Rotary Club International, which was
the brainchild of Chicago attorney Paul Harris,
came to fruition in 1905. Initially, Harris
envisioned a group where “professionals with
diverse backgrounds could exchange ideas and
form meaningful lifelong relationships.”
Over the years, the Rotary Club mission has
evolved to also embrace humanitarian services,
with the organization famously embarking on
the enormous challenge of tackling the polio
epidemic in 1979. Currently, the Rotary Club
International boasts more than 1.2 million
members, spread amongst 35,000+ clubs.
Valerie Smith is currently the ESRC president.
Initially from Winnetka, Illinois, located not too
far from Chicago, Smith traveled a somewhat
circuitous route to El Segundo. She worked
in the Peach Tree state of Georgia as a realtor
and spent time in Dallas, Texas, running a
Brunswick bowling center, before landing in
El Segundo in 2014.
Smith said that, while the past year has been
challenging for the club, the administration
and members are still passionately forging
ahead with their programs. Smith, whose oneyear
tenure as president is up in July, related
that some of her constituency had, somewhat
in jest, asked her that since, because of the
pandemic, she had not “had the full experience
of being president in Rotary; would you like
to be president again?”
Smith, chuckling, said she told them, “Thanks
for the compliment, but I don’t think so.” She
will be turning over the responsibilities of the
ESRC to longtime member Ed Su, the owner
of Main Street’s venerable Studio Printing.
Su is slated to take over the presidency reins
later this Summer.
Once the pandemic and mandated lockdowns
began, the ESRC, Smith said, became
involved in a senior shopping program that
facilitates the purchasing of necessities for
older residents who have been cooped up at
home. She noted that Rotary volunteers, racking
up hours of steadfastly shopping for and
delivering necessary items, had been able to
El Segundo Rotary Club President Valerie Smith
See ESMoA, page 8
See Rotary Club, page 5
Friday
Mostly
Sunny
67˚/54˚
Saturday
Partly
Cloudy
66˚/54˚
Sunday
Partly
Cloudy
67˚/54˚