Skip Hellewell News Today

With great sadness, we announce the passing of Skip Hellewell. For the past six years, Skip has written the “Finding Meaning” column for the Indy.

Do you recall the Walt Whitman poem, “There was a child went forth every day”? Whitman recalled the formative experiences of childhood, how the objects we first look upon become part of us.

This letter is in response to Tom Osborne's Sept. 9 column "Opinion: Green Light: Deflection is the New Denial of Climate Change." Dr. Osborne's position is clear, reasonably stated and scientifically backed. 

Readers, this column is my response to Skip Hellewell’s guest opinion in the Aug. 25 edition of the Indy, which I find very troubling. 

Skip Hellewell apparently learned nothing from the recent destructive storm Hilary, which caused flash flooding and horrendous mudslides that filled people's homes and set rainfall records. He offers a long-debunked rationale that since the storm's effects on Laguna Beach were not as bad as they might have been, one can conclude that climate models cannot predict events decades in the future.

American football is just that—American. Lists of sports rank it as low as ninth most popular in the world, tied with another local innovation, basketball. It's a curious thing how our sports haven't spread the way as, say, our music and movies have.

Traditions reflect the culture of a family. The Beautiful Wife is our tradition guru; though physically petite, she's our spiritual giant for the religious holidays of Christmas and Easter. This Sunday, the family will gather for our traditional Easter dinner.

Here’s a story that has always puzzled me. Before there was much in Laguna Beach, century-old photos show an impressive two-story structure fronted by Greek columns. Known as the Pomona College Marine Laboratory, it’s across from Main Beach and next door to “Tent City,” an array of forty tents that served as dorms. How did this come about?  

My family fled the cold, harsh winters of New York in search of warm sunshine, as doctors suggested we should move to a climate more conducive to helping my father's tuberculosis. We tried Florida, but the humidity was not helpful to him. We headed to California and settled in Hollywood for the winter, where my parents had good friends. My mother heard about a charming beach village in Orange County and rented a cottage in South Laguna for a two-week summer stay. Lovely Laguna won our heart...

Laguna Beach recently bought the former St. Catherine of Siena Parish School for $23 million. Many thought it seemed a reasonable price for 6.5 acres of coastal land with 39,500 square feet of school buildings. But that’s the money part. Laguna Beach Indy columnist Skip Hellewell wondered about the human side of the story, did a little digging, and found not one but two parochial schools in Laguna, each with a lost story.