1999 The year in review

December 1-14: Rotary Rocket announces layoffs in Mojave

Dec. 1

MOJAVE - About a year ago, Rotary Rocket employed more than 20 people at its research and development facility at the Mojave Airport. Today, that number is down to five. While such a serious cutback may sound like the beginning of the end for Rotary Rocket, one of several companies involved in creating private access to space, officials say that could not be farther from the truth.

LANCASTER - It's been about a decade since anyone made a purchase at the Sears building in Lancaster. But city administrators are trying to change that with part of a new beautification program unveiled Tuesday at the site of the abandoned Sears building, which sits near the intersection of Avenue K and 10th Street West. The program - called "Lookin' Good Lancaster" - will commence with the demolition of the Sears building and the former Mitsubishi building that sits just to the south. The buildings are owned by Seabury Lancaster Investment Group, a San Francisco firm.

VALYERMO - The Rev. Vincent Martin, the Roman Catholic monk who brought the Benedictines of St. Andrew's Abbey to Valyermo more than four decades ago, died Tuesday morning.

He was 87.

His death comes 44 years to the day after he celebrated the first Mass at the Valyermo monastery - Nov. 30, 1955. And in the Roman Catholic Church, Nov. 30 is the Feast of St. Andrew, a day honoring the saint for whom the monastery is named.

LANCASTER - Data-entry employees at the Deluxe Corp. check-printing plant claim they could be replaced as soon as April or May by cheap overseas labor.

While the corporation officials said earlier this year the employees would be replaced by automation, employees say that statement simply wasn't true.

Dec. 2

LOS ANGELES - The Transit Mixed Concrete proposal for an enormous sand and gravel mine in Soledad Canyon was struck down Wednesday by the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission. Transit Mixed had been pursuing a land use permit to excavate at a 460-acre site near Soledad Canyon and Agua Dulce Canyon roads.

LANCASTER - It's not the picture local high school officials were hoping to see as the Nov. 2 Measure E semiofficial election results came in this week.

The election results are semiofficial until accepted by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

The area-by-area results show that all precincts failed to garner the two-thirds majority vote the bond measure needed to pass.

LANCASTER - Dark clouds overtook blue skies in Lancaster on Wednesday morning and hovered over the Lancaster Community Shelter as the chill of a late-fall morning was accentuated by wind gusts that helped thrust the cold through the weaves of mid-weight coats.

It was the kind of morning former shelter resident, and now shelter employee, Dawn Venegas, probably remembers all too vividly from the days, not so long ago, when she lived on the streets.

Dec. 3

PALMDALE - The Boeing Co.'s Phantom Works has beaten the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works to the show-and-tell phase in the competition to build a joint strike fighter.

Boeing said Thursday it will roll out its X-32A, the first of two Boeing joint strike fighters, at a ceremony for its employees Dec. 14.

Dec. 4

QUARTZ HILL - Local pioneer agriculturalist Francis Godde, who championed Antelope Valley education right up to his 87th birthday last month, died Friday after a brief illness.

Friends and funeral director Jim Mumaw confirmed the death of the patriarch of one of the Valley's prominent land-owning families.

LANCASTER - The show goes on at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center. New faces, fresh talent at the helm.

Seeing was indeed believing for the city officials who earlier this week chose former technical director Mary Tanner to manage the Lancaster Performing Arts Center.

Tanner, who had been interim manager for the theater since January, was one of more than 35 nationwide applicants for the job, which has been open since Bruce Spain vacated the position in August 1998 after six years.

PALMDALE - The Air Force is OK with plans to lure passenger carriers to the Palmdale Regional Airport terminal at Air Force Plant 42.

But the nation's air arm is not thrilled about full-scale development of 17,500 acres of airport land directly east of Plant 42's east-west runways.

As drawn, such an airport would send planes directly over the Air Force facility.

PALMDALE - Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators say the middle school youth who died after a fistfight with another student was believed to be the instigator of the fracas, according to interviews with dozens of students.

Interviewing about 25 students from Juniper Intermediate School, sheriff's investigators say they believe Stephan Corson picked the fight with a classmate and apparently threw the first punch.

Dec. 5

EDWARDS AFB - The first of three hypersonic, air-breathing X-planes has arrived at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center.

Called the X-43 A, the unmanned ship will sprint to speeds above Mach 5 during a test flight scheduled for May 2000. If the test works, it will be the first time a nonrocket engine powers any craft beyond Mach 5, which is the threshold for supersonic flight.

Dec. 6

VALYERMO - As a December chill and darkness descended on the Antelope Valley on Sunday night, the sunset silhouetted the shadows of more than 300 people in a procession up a hillside of St. Andrew's Abbey.

Mourners bowed their heads in grief as they paid respects to a sacred man who touched so many lives in the Valley and around the world.

PALMDALE - Like sheriff's deputies of bygone days, modern day deputies are riding rough over the range on their trusty steeds - except today's trusty steeds are Honda XR400 off-road motorcycles.

Because of the large number of calls deputies respond to in undeveloped off-road areas of the Antelope Valley, six Palmdale Sheriff's Station deputies will become an iron-horse riding posse to police remote locations of the south Valley under a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

LANCASTER - A dismissed Palmdale School District middle school teacher charged with the rape of a former student entered a no contest plea Monday to a lesser charge of lewd conduct with a child as part of a deal struck with the prosecution.

Public Defender Mitchell Bruckner said Wayne Anthony Martin changed his plea on one charge of lewd conduct to no contest.

Dec 7.

PALMDALE - The superintendent of the Valley's largest elementary school district is seeking a 20% raise but faces a board with mixed views, with one trustee citing competitive concerns and two others calling the idea outrageous. At least two trustees say while they are pleased with Superintendent Nancy Smith's job performance, they are not pleased with her proposal.

Dec. 8

PALMDALE - Nancy Smith, superintendent of the Palmdale School District, will have to wait until at least Jan. 18 before trustees decide whether or not to grant her a pay hike.

The superintendent of the Valley's largest elementary school district is seeking a raise which would make her the second-highest-paid superintendent in this portion of the high desert.

LOS ANGELES - If a hate crime occurs in a Los Angeles County school and no one reports it, is it still a hate crime?

The Antelope Valley and the Los Angeles Basin may have different answers to this question.

In the Valley, racially motivated violence or intimidation is so vigorously reported that it has left the region with a notorious reputation as a hotbed for hate crime.

LANCASTER - It was a miserable day for such a momentous occasion - the groundbreaking ceremony for the new fairgrounds near West Avenue H and the 14 Freeway.

High winds and blowing dust made for less-than-perfect conditions Tuesday morning. Although a tent had been erected for the ceremony, dust covered the chairs and the wind buffeted the tent, making or a few nervous moments for the speakers and attendees.

LANCASTER - Fierce winds made for a less-than-enjoyable day in the Antelope Valley on Tuesday.

Winds gusted to 40 mph and blasted dust across Valley streets and highways, blinding some drivers as they made their way to work and school.

However, the California Highway Patrol reported a "no news is good news" kind of day with no reports of wind- or weather-related accidents.

Dec. 9

EDWARDS AFB - Sometimes it looks like a giant smiley face, curving into a nearly perfect half-circle. At other times, it looks like a giant drinking straw, hovering strangely over Rogers Dry Lake.

This is the Helios prototype, a flying wing scientists plan to cover with solar cells and market as a relay platform for telecommunications systems.

The gangly bird - its wingspan longer than a Boeing 747's - successfully completed its initial developmental test flight program at Edwards on Wednesday.

LANCASTER - The arrival of Democrat Gray Davis in the governor's chair combined with a Democratic majority Legislature poses a future where the Antelope Valley could be carved up into four congressional districts.

That was the forecast Wednesday from state Sen. William J. "Pete" Knight, who told the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce that Valley residents who align with the GOP had better prepare themselves for redistricting and reapportionment flowing from the 2000 census.

Dec. 10

PALMDALE - The City Council either took a great leap forward or stabbed its constituents in the back Wednesday, depending on whom you ask.

The five members of the new council voted unanimously to adopt a policy that prohibits luring existing businesses from Lancaster.

The question, posed by Mayor Jim Ledford, is whether the new council's loyalties are to the people who elected them in Palmdale, or a broader constituency in the Antelope Valley.

LANCASTER - Acting on legal advice, Antelope Valley College officials will offer full-time jobs to 15 teachers who have been teaching more than their share of classes on a part-time basis.

PALMDALE - A well-known peacemaker in some of America's most violent and divided communities took his stories of hope to students at Highland High School on Thursday.

Robert Woodson, a former high school dropout who founded the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in 1981, focuses on helping communities turn povertystricken, gang-infested inner city neighborhoods around.

LANCASTER - The curfew ordinance Palmdale officials passed in 1989 is unconstitutional, a juvenile court judge ruled Thursday. But that doesn't mean juveniles should celebrate their new late-night freedom.

A new curfew is on the way. The City Council passed a new, constitution-friendly curfew ordinance Wednesday night, while repealing the old one at the same time.

Dec. 11

PALMDALE - For a trio of Antelope Valley retailers, a City Council decision to deny them an incentive to move is discriminatory and a downer, the businessmen say, and may prompt some of them to leave the area entirely.

At least one will begin seeking another site for operations, possibly along the Antelope Valley Freeway south of Palmdale, a company representative said Friday.

WASHINGTON - After surviving a near-death experience in Congress, Lockheed Martin Corp. has won approval from the Defense Department to start building its controversial F-22 jet fighters.

LANCASTER - There were Christmas presents and decorations, turkey and all the trimmings Thursday at the Lancaster Community Shelter. Santa Claus even made an appearance.

But the presents Santa didn't have to give the families were the gifts they found inside themselves - love, hope and a sense of family.

PALMDALE - The first B-2 stealth bomber arrived at Air Force Plant 42 Friday for a new program of airframe maintenance, ensuring employment levels will stay above 1,200 workers at Northrop Grumman Corp's. Site 4 facility until 2005.

Northrop currently employs 1,600 at its Site 4 location, but that number is expected to drop to 1,200 or 1,400 by the middle of next year as large-scale upgrades to the planes wind down in the spring or summer.

Dec. 12

PALMDALE - Twelveyearold John MacDonald was supposed to be carrying a shovel in the Palmdale Christmas Parade on Saturday morning.

It would be his job to walk Palmdale Boulevard and scoop the manure of the parade's many horses.

Before the festivities began, MacDonald stopped to pet a llama, which would march in the parade with a long red stocking slung over its back.

PALMDALE - From the moment they entered kindergarten, they knew they were different.

It wasn't because they looked different or acted differently from other children. Heck, it wasn't even because they wore Underoos underwear while their older and more mature siblings sported orange hair like Cyndi Lauper's or a silver glove like Michael Jackson's.

LANCASTER - Some Valley students could take wing in the new millennium by attending a state-of-the-art school designed in the shape of a B-2 stealth bomber.

The first-of-its-kind futuristic campus is being designed for Lancaster School District's proposed permanent Jack Northrop Elementary School near Challenger Way and East Avenue K-2.

Dec. 13

LAKE LOS ANGELES - Lancaster patrol deputies, investigating a report of a strange odor, uncovered a secret drug lab capable of producing millions of dollars of the illegal narcotic methamphetamine on Saturday night.

An anonymous 911 caller told deputies that there was smoke and the smell of burning tires coming from a house in the 18200 block of East Avenue H-8. When deputies arrived on scene shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday, the odor permeated the air and deputies drove around the property fence line trying to determine the source of the smell.

BAKERSFIELD - There's gold in them thar' hills - and limestone, and dimension stone, and borates.

At least that's what a draft report compiled by the California Department of Conservation Division of Mines and Geology says about east Kern County.

The findings in the report - "Mineral Land Classification of Southeastern Kern County, California" - were disclosed Thursday at a public workshop sponsored by DMG in Bakersfield.

EDWARDS AFB - Sitting inside their cockpits, Capts. Jeff Lampe and Frank Lane owned a view that Bob Uecker certainly would be jealous of. The two 452nd Flight Test Squadron pilots at Edwards Air Force Base truly had front-row seats for the heralded Leonid meteor shower.

Dec. 14

PALMDALE - A melted cable line that took out most of Palmdale High School's power Monday morning prompted school officials to cancel classes and send thousands of young people streaming toward home or onto Valley streets.

Shortly after school started at 7:30 a.m., students received word via a school memo during their first-period classes that school had been canceled for the day.

LANCASTER - A year-old moratorium on the construction of new apartments in Lancaster could be extended for another 12 months under an ordinance to be discussed tonight by the City Council.

The extension has been recommended by Community Development Director Brian Hawley to give Lancaster more time to determine the amount of land that should be zoned for apartments under the city's General Plan.

LANCASTER - Twenty-one down, three to go.

That's the status of Lancaster's demolition of old apartment buildings near Raysack Avenue. The city is ridding the area of the buildings that administrators say are crime magnets.

By razing the unsightly apartment complexes, the city is making way for affordable single-family housing developments, officials say.

LANCASTER - The Salvation Army - bell ringers, thrift stores, tambourines, stiff militarylike red tunic uniforms with high collars.

Nowadays, the Salvation Army is only some of that, and more.

For the most part, the U.S. Marines-style tunics have made way for a softer look, much like the uniform of an airline pilot. The tambourines are largely symbolic, but the holiday kettle campaign and thrift stores provide needed income for the Salvation Army to do its job year round - reaching out to people in need.

Uploaded January 3, 2000