May 4 , 2007
By Bethania Palma, Staff Writer
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
AZUSA - White's Funeral Home has been in the Azusa community for more than 90 years, and has remained in family hands for three generations.
That's why Ron White, the owner and director, along with other Azusans, will be featured in a documentary DVD about the city's history that will premiere today at the Azusa Senior Center.
The film is a culmination of three years of research by the Azusa Heritage Project, a group of about 10 volunteers who scoured the community interviewing people with deep roots there.
"Azusa is the kind of place that still has a lot of people that have been in the community for generations," said Azusa Heritage project director Luisa Miranda.
She said "seeds of the idea" began to be planted back in 2003, and through word of mouth, the organization began building a list of people to interview and stories to capture.
The White family made the list.
Ron White grew up with his parents and six siblings in the family-run mortuary that his step-grandparents, Dan and Grace White, opened at 404 E. Foothill Blvd. in 1926.
"We played hide-and-go-
seek in the casket room," he recalled.
Now, he said, because of the advent of pagers, answering services and cell phones, he no longer has to live at the mortuary, though he is on-call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"As kids, we never got to go on family vacations," he said. "It's nice to be able to go home and have a break."
The hard work is worth it to White, an Azusa High School graduate who served with the Army in the Vietnam War.
"I enjoy helping people and being able to provide some ray of hope and sunshine in planning a proper remembrance of this person," he said.
He added that White's Funeral Home is the only independent, family-run mortuary in the East San Gabriel Valley, giving his customers a more personalized experience.
"We serve the community, not shareholders," he said.
Other stories featured in the film include Katy Ramirez, an 87-year-old who talked about the prejudice experienced by Latinos decades ago.
"When she was growing up, Hispanics could only swim at the public pool one day out of the week, because that was the day they changed the water," said project volunteer Art Ramirez. "Later, when she became a park commissioner, one of the areas she was responsible for was the pool."
Miranda said the film, which was funded through a grant from the California Council for the Humanities and private donations, includes Johnny Luna, a well-known, versatile musician and band leader, and Leo Nasser, who started Azusa Golden Days, among many others.
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