Pandemic and renovations have changed its character Fingers crossed, the pandemic will wane and eventually people will again feel comfortable going out and about again. At 19 months and counting, the pandemic has left Rossmoor’s central hub at Gateway a ghost town. A lone resident sits and reads inside an empty Redwood Room at Gateway as the closed...

Signs indicating evacuation zones started going up in Rossmoor last week as part of the “Know Your Zone” campaign. Each entry sign, or street signs for those lacking entry markings, will include a colored and numbered sign that represents that entry or street’s fire evacuation zone. There are eight zones in Rossmoor, designated by WCR (for Walnut C...

GRF Planning Committee The Planning Committee suggested calling in the experts before making changes to the Dollar Clubhouse restrooms or forming a new task force to tackle disabilities issues in Rossmoor. With the GRF Board having already approved funds to renovate Dollar’s first-floor restrooms, the Planning Committee debated at its Nov. 15 meeti...

Leaders at Grace Presbyterian Church said they hope to formally bring a proposal to build six “micro homes” on the church campus just outside Rossmoor by the end of December. But church leaders and others supporting this “Hope Village” project are still working to get their main message out, that these homes are not the tiny “pallet shelters” or ot...

Hobby studios, Dollar among Board’s top priorities GRF directors looked into the next decade and at residents’ two-dozen-item list of wants for new facilities and renovation of old, and tried to reconcile what’s really possible. One project – renovation of the second wing of the hobby studios at Gateway next year – quickly rose to the top. At an es...

Fitness Center Advisory Committee members said they will try to impress upon Fitness Center users that weights, resistance bands and other exercise equipment need to be returned to racks or other storage areas. At a Nov. 10 meeting, committee members said they hope improved signage, this story in the News and word-of-mouth among gym users will resu...

When two directors of Rossmoor’s Second Mutual invited Barbara El-Baroudi to discuss joining the board over coffee, she wasn’t exactly bowled over. “I don’t know,” El-Baroudi says when asked why she agreed. “It wasn’t anything that was on my mind. They kind of talked me into it.” But she’s quick to add that she’s glad they did. “Overall, it’s been ...

From Coast Guard reservist to an antiwar activist Marvin Cohen spent 6½ years in the U. S. Coast Guard reserve based at Coast Guard Island, part of the city of Alameda. He and a friend joined in 1954, when both were 17. “We thought that, maybe, if we were in the Coast Guard, we could save somebody’s life, and not kill people,” said Cohen, a 17-year...

Dr. Ike Ichikawa was at the forefront of research in treating kidney disease Dr. Iekuni Ichikawa showed photos of people he worked with at his last stop in the workaday world, treating seniors through the Harmony Clinic in Japan. One of them was of a 100-year-old woman who was an expert in calligraphy. “I was the only one from the ‘outside’ who vis...

Urcil Commons has a treasure trove of crisp black-and-white photos taken during the 2½ years she served as an Army nurse during World War II, on Adak Island, Alaska, which during the war was a strategic point from which the U.S. military was fighting Japanese forces in the northern Pacific. Some images show Commons with her colleagues, in action or...