Main Street
Karen Edgerton raises $4,500 for Alzheimers group
By Mary Ann Cook
BIKING FOR ALZHEIMERS: Karen Edgerton, 27, a Los Gatos High School grad, has just completed her ocean-to-ocean bicycle trek and in doing so has raised more than $4,500 for the local Alzheimers Association. She rode some 4,500 miles from Portland, Ore., to Yorktown, Va., in three months time.
She was the only woman of the 13 bikers who finished. Six other women started on the trek, but dropped out along the way. The early-stage Alzheimers group has been following her trip as one of their activities. Both her (living) grandparents suffer from Alzheimers.
Edgerton has also ridden to raise money for the Leukemia Foundation. She is a mechanical engineer who left that field to study something new, is now a design student at De Anza.
PANORAMA PAGEANT: Another Los Gatan has a key role in the millennium musical extravaganza composed by Craig Bohmler for production at the Concord Pavilion Oct. 12-14 . Marsha Mercant, Leigh High School grad, plays Mrs. Muir, in the vast pageant of 100 performers.
Mercant was in the Los Angeles companies of Cats and Les Miserables. She has also appeared in productions of 42nd Street Moon and the George Herman Revue. She and her husband John Howard Swain run a drama school in San Francisco called Full Circle Productions.
Earlier, and locally, Mercant played Maria in West Side Story and a daughter in Fiddler on the Roof in San Jose for CLO. She is the daughter of Tony and Margie Mercant.
Mountain Days: the John Muir Musical will be the first historical drama to be performed in northern California. The panorama was two years in creation, and negotiations are underway to build an outdoor amphitheater in Martinez so the pageant can be produced every year.
CHAMPION TUMBLER: Christine Scales, 10, won a gold medal in women's platform tumbling at the Sports Acrobatics National Championships. She competed in the class 5, age 10-12, division, performing twists and flips down a 70-foot-long runway and racked up a score of 9.033 in one heat of the competition.
Christine has been taking tumbling classes since she was 5 from Anatoliy Solodar's Aerial Tumbling and Acrobatics of San Jose. She has been on the team for the past two years and is one of nine from that studio who came home with a gold medal. Solodar was named coach of the year at the championships.
Christine, described as high energy by her mother, is a triplet. Her brothers are Michael and Andrew and they have an older brother, Tyler, 14. Their parents are Ellen and Robert Scales.
OPERA GUILD: Larry Hancock, marketing director of Opera San Jose opened the San Jose Opera Guild's lecture series, bringing Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky into vivid focus. The opera is based on an epic poem by Alexander Pushkin, famed Russian man of letters.
Some 11 operas have been created using the Pushkin poem as a starting point. It's a story of unrequited love, first for the heroine, Tatiana, and, six years later, for the hero, Onegin. Both declare their love via letters and then are rejected by their beloved. By the time Onegin is smitten, Tatiana has married.
As fascinating as that story is, the story of Pushkin's great grandfather is even more remarkable and evidently true. An Abyssinian prince who was kidnapped at the age of 7, he was given as a gift to Peter the Great of Russia, who raised him as his own son.
He led an adventuresome life, was treated as royalty throughout Europe, and ended up serving as Peter's right-hand man.
In other opera news the guild's fall gala will be held on Sept. 26, at the St. Claire Hotel and Victor Floyd, a new Los Gatan, will sing the tenor role.
FLYING HIGH: Gary Niva of Monte Sereno is a licensed pilot who takes young people for demo rides as part of the Aviation Foundation's Young Eagles program. He has now given more than 400 youngsters a ride up into the blue in his plane.
The idea of the Young Eagles program is to help young people discover the possibilities in the world of aviation. The sponsor is the Experimental Aircraft Association with the aim of introducing 1 million youngsters to flying by its 50th anniversary in the year 2003.
In his down-to-earth job Niva is a biology and chemistry teacher at Lynbrook High School. His father was a crop-duster in South Dakota so Niva grew up with flying. His son Eric is midway through his own pilot training.
APPOINTEE: Robin Reynolds, LGHS '88, has been named associate athletic director and senior women's administrator for Santa Clara University. During her LGHS days she was leader and choreographer of the school dance team, and performed and choreographed for various local theater productions.
REUNION: The 57th reunion of the Los Gatos High School class of '43 will be Oct. 6 and 7, at the Tollhouse Hotel in Los Gatos. Both events start at 6 p.m. with no-host cocktails. Saturday dinner is at 7 p.m. at the Tollhouse. Price for dinner is $40. For reservations contact Pete Radonich, P.O. Box 642, Los Gatos, 95031.
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