La Mirada's Malkin to students LA MIRADA - When he was younger, City Councilman Hal Malkin remembers his mom saying that she just couldn’t tell whether he’d end up becoming president of the United States or doing time in the maximum-security prison at Fort Leavenworth.
“I’m not sure which, honey,” she told Malkin, 66, who leaves the council this March after serving 17 years on the five-member panel. So when he was elected to the City Council, it was “one of her proudest moments. And she got to see me serve as mayor as well,” he said. But Malkin says it was his mom’s values that stuck with him. He worked in the civil rights and anti-war movements in the 1960s, participated in Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and did research for a Nobel-prize winning economist. He also got a few lessons from John Wooden when he tried out for the UCLA basketball team, saying the famed coach’s Pyramid of Success philosophy that calls for everyone to do their best was an important part of his development. “The core values are important,” Malkin told a group of La Mirada high-schoolers at a recent luncheon for the city’s Youth In Government program, which pairs youngsters with a council or staff member and exposes them to city government. “Over the years, everything changed around me,” he told the students. “But you don’t change because the wind blows differently or there’s different music or someone tells you you have to. “If you have good solid core values, and you maintain them, you’ll be OK.” For Malkin, who said he grew up poor, he felt a duty to help those who needed it - and it started with the civil rights movement, during which he estimates he was arrested hundreds of times during protests in Alabama. And as his retirement approaches this year, he plans to continue with that duty of helping others, particularly the less fortunate. “The blacks in the South were so repressed and there was bigotry - everything I couldn’t stand,” he said. “It was my duty to help them. I saw my friends get sent to Vietnam and I didn’t believe it was right, so I had to protest and I became an anti-war person. “I’m not the only one who did this,” he said. “It was just me doing what I thought I had to do, the right thing. It was me saying, `This is what I’ve got.”’ Malkin’s Youth In Government presentation hit a nerve with La Mirada High senior Harrison Wu, who was particularly struck when Malkin talked about the danger he faced during the civil rights protests. “I didn’t really expect his life to be too interesting, but we’ve been reading about these things in history books,” said Wu, 16. “So it was kind of cool to know someone who lived through it all.” Wu wasn’t the only one - fellow City Councilman Gabe Garcia said he didn’t quite know what to expect from Malkin’s presentation at first. “I thought it would take 10 minutes, max,” Garcia said jokingly at last week’s council meeting. “I always knew him as a die-hard Democrat, but he talked about protesting for civil rights and the Vietnam War. “It was a good presentation,’ Garcia said, adding that it sent an encouraging message to students to “make a difference by getting involved in their community - for all the right reasons.” [email protected] 562-698-0955, ext. 3051 -- http://www.whittierdailynews.com/news/ci_17253394%3E Via InstaFetch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
