Finding the Lost Boys

In the Tabby Storytime Theater on a Thursday afternoon, an African folk song played over speakers, children pounded drums and shook maracas, and Fred Provencher quietly pondered the future of his city.

The Feb. 18 event at the Huntington Beach Central Library was billed as a “Children’s Hour,” and there was no mention of the genocide in Darfur, the immigration debate or the hate crimes that once dogged Surf City’s reputation. The children present were elementary school age and younger, so the program centered on upbeat diversions: a tribal folk tale, a children’s author doing monkey impressions and enough percussion instruments to go around.

But Provencher, the founder of the HB Reads program, hoped the festivities would have a more lasting impact. Since 2008, he and his colleagues have set up a month of events around town trumpeting diversity and human rights, and this year, teens and adults were busy learning about the Lost Boys of Sudan — a group of refugees who were given an opportunity to escape the violence in their native land and start over in the United States. Meanwhile, the youngest kids, who were too young to understand the plight of refugees, simply soaked in the joys of another culture.

“Whether they’re aware of it or not, that’s what they’re doing,” said Provencher, a former teacher. Asked what he felt watching the kids exult to a Third World song, he replied with one word: “Hope.”

A changing Surf City

Lt. Russell Reinhart knows the neighborhood well. The 23-year veteran of the Huntington Beach Police Department has watched downtown evolve into a top tourist destination, as multimillion-dollar developments have sprouted up and families have moved in.

The area felt less friendly a decade or two ago, when Huntington Beach became almost as famous for intolerance as it was for surfing. Downtown served as the haven for skinheads who garnered enough of a reputation to be mentioned in Time magazine. And it’s where the incident took place that led to the creation of the city’s Human Relations Task Force, which in turn spawned HB Reads.

In 1996, George Mondragon, a Native American from San Bernardino, was stabbed 28 times near the Huntington Beach Pier by Erik Roy Anderson, a local 20-year-old white supremacist. The attack on Mondragon, who barely survived, was the latest in a spate of well-publicized hate crimes in Huntington Beach, and for a core group of residents it was the last straw.

That year, City Council members Ralph Bauer and Shirley Dettloff founded the task force, which meets monthly with police to review reported hate crimes and backs diversity-themed programs in schools. Provencher, a charter member of the task force, got the idea for HB Reads several years ago when he visited Chicago, which has a similar program where all residents are asked to read the same book.

Whether the task force and HB Reads have put a dent in intolerance is hard to measure from statistics. According to police figures, the number of recorded hate crimes has vacillated from one to 13 a year from 1998 to 2009. There was a notable exception in 2005, when the department used a different system to define hate crimes and logged 27.

Regardless of the data, though, Reinhart said he has seen a transformation.

“It used to be, 20 years ago, there was an expectation,” he said. “You’d see groups of white supremacists [downtown], not committing any crimes, but just hanging out.” he said. “That was their social hangout. They’re just not down there anymore.”

The true face of refugees

Huntington Beach may have softened with time, but when the HB Reads committee selected a book for 2010, it opted for one about the difficulties that outsiders face coming to Southern California.

According to member Mary Adams Urashima, the committee follows two criteria in picking a title: It must have a human relations or diversity theme, and it must cost $15 or less. “They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky,” a memoir of three boys who escaped the ongoing civil war in Sudan and settled in San Diego County, fit the bill this year.

Every year, the HB Reads committee chooses a book that depicts life in a less fortunate part of the world. The program started in 2008 with Greg Mortenson’s “Three Cups of Tea,” the account of a man who built schools in Afghanistan and other impoverished parts of Central Asia, and followed it last year with George Guthridge’s “The Kids from Nowhere,” about an educator in a remote Alaskan village.

The message of “They Poured Fire,” Urashima said, may hit closer to home for local readers due to Southern California’s refugee population. Some students, she said, specifically recommended the Lost Boys’ book.

“It helps them understand that when we have refugees, there’s a story behind why they’re here — a very moving, compelling story,” Urashima said. “And it’s the same reason our ancestors came.”

In the last month, HB Reads has hosted African story times for children, screened documentaries about the conflict in Sudan and hosted an international craft fair at the central library. The program will conclude March 11, when Benjamin Ajak and Benson Deng, two of the authors of “They Poured Fire,” meet with students at Huntington Beach High School.

Hope for a better future

Bauer, a Huntington Beach resident for 45 years, has experienced little intolerance firsthand. But he’s thought about it plenty over the years. His German parents fled before the rise of Hitler, and Bauer speculates that he might not be alive if they had stayed in Europe.

On May 6, 1996, he joined six other council members in signing the city’s “Declaration of Policy About Human Dignity,” the manifesto for the Human Relations Task Force. The document stresses the city’s commitment to combating hate crimes, adding midway through, “The City Council warns those who advocate or perpetrate hate not to test the community’s resolve to oppose them.”

Now retired, Bauer doesn’t take an active role in HB Reads, but he makes it a point to read the selected book every year.

And though he agrees that Surf City feels more welcoming today than it did in the past, he doesn’t take that as a sign to relax.

“There’s a tendency not to be reminded of things that are unpleasant,” Bauer said. “It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, that was an isolated incident and will never happen again.’ But being of German background, it’s hard to think that way.

“You learn to be vigilant.”

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