Local Students Help Preserve Los Angeles History

Local college students with a penchant for Los Angeles history got involved with helping local costumer Tess Inman in her passion project to preserve the memory of the Ambassador Hotel.

Inman has worked closely with Margaret Burk, who lives in a local care facility, and was the publicist for the Ambassador Hotel in the glory days when presidents stayed there and Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra played there. She has stories about Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes staying at the hotel, and when Robert F. Kennedy was shot there.

“It is a wonderful thing that these students are so interested in history that would otherwise be lost and forgotten,” said Burk, 93, who has lived locally since WWII and chronicled her memories and photographs in a book Are the Stars Out Tonight?

The student interns are part of the nonprofit program, The Studio, based in Chinatown, and grew up in all parts of the Los Angeles area. Executive director Sharon Sekhon hosted an event over the Labor Day Weekend to allow students to display their projects, which included biking tours along the Los Angeles River, interviewing the homeless, chronicling the plight of local veterans and the history of the community surrounding the Ambassador Hotel, which has been torn down and rebuilt as a public school in the Wilshire district.

“While the Ambassador Hotel may rightfully hold a place in historical memory for various political and cultural events, the history of its neighborhood provides an even more pluralistic vision of Los Angeles’ history,” said Sekhon.

George Castillo, a student of California State University, Los Angeles, said, “It was great being able to talk with someone who was actually at the Ambassador and knew all the people there.”

He and Marie Eleanore Cabal have put together a comprehensive booklet about the neighborhood in the Wilshire Boulevard area, and they hope to have a walking tour of the area sometime in the near future.

Among the other projects, Michelle Lopez and her team were putting together a quilt showing the community of Artesia. “We represent every community that people drive by on the freeway and never notice, and people don’t care about the lives there or the kind of problems and racism that go on there.” 

Another student worked on her Homeless inspiration Project interviewing homeless people and finding out what their concerns were. Michael Mattice and Nicole Miller focused on local veterans from all over Los Angeles and tried to identify their concerns and needs. He also wrote a protest song with the help of a veteran.

Check out the videos above showing the projects by the local students, and the photo gallery of the event, as well as their own personal testimonies of their projects.

Check the Studio website for more information on the future walking tour.

 Also, for more information:

• Common Ground Project:
http://www.lahistoryarchive.org/resources/CommonGround/
• Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools Complex:
http://rfkcommunityschools.org/
• The Studio for Southern California History:
http://www.socalstudio.org/