Diane Baldwin
Diane Baldwin served as staff photographer for The Malibu Times from 1989 through 1996.
“I do feel lucky to have spent that time in Malibu and to have made some people happy with the photos I took for the paper and to see some history in the making — Malibu becoming a city. I don’t feel I did anything special like a lot of people who received Dolphin Awards. I was the voyeur. I was the one reporting on the people who made Malibu the unique place that it is.
“When I first got to Malibu, I would look at this license plate, Malibu — A Way of Life, and I would laugh and think, ‘Malibu, how nice, the ocean, how beautiful, and everybody has it great out here.’ Then I realized after a few mudslides and a fire and a few other things that a way of life means people pitch in when something happens. When everybody else is at home watching the storm on TV, people in Malibu are not able to get home. They’re much more present in what’s going on.”
In one day, she could photograph an Optimist pancake breakfast, an art class painting in a canyon park, a school play, a sporting event, a City Council meeting or the sunset.
Baldwin appreciates the award, but says, “If anybody cut out a picture of their kid and put it in an album, that’s enough reward for me.”
She hopes at the awards ceremony she will see some Malibuites she has missed.
Mark Ball
Mark Ball is a hometown product. He started first grade at Juan Cabrillo Elementary School, was in the first sixth-grade class at the then-recently built Malibu Middle School and then attended Santa Monica High School.
He remembers when he could ride his bike or horse from Point Dume to Trancas Market, watching out for grazing cattle and sheep, and once a year there was an annual 4-H fair and rodeo in the Civic Center.
For many years, he ran the family filling station at the corner of Pacific Coast Highway and Heathercliff. Now, he is a Farmers Insurance agent with offices in Malibu.
While many of his classmates left he stayed, married, started raising a family and became a local business and community leader.
These days, he is an Optimist (and former president of the Malibu club) and a member of the Chamber of Commerce (and its former president).
He is also the charter chair of the Malibu Chapter of the American Heart Association, chair of the Business Roundtable, member of the city’s Public Safety Commission and of the School Facilities Development Committee, which proposed and worked on the $42 million school bond initiative that passed overwhelmingly in November.
He still lives in Malibu with his wife, Karin, a registered nurse, and his two children, Genevive, age 10, and like her dad before her a student at Juan Cabrillo, and Juliana, age 4, in preschool at St. Aidan’s.
John Harlow
John Harlow has been toiling in the Malibu political trenches for much of his adult life. He and his wife, Emily, moved to Malibu in 1965, one of the early residents at the new Malibu Cove Colony and a charter member of their HOA.
Born and raised in Venice, Calif., he attended Venice High School and was a forward on its basketball team that won the city championship. After graduating from UCLA in 1954 with a BBA, he returned to VHS to teach, then worked at General Telephone, where he met Emily, and then moved to Hughes Aircraft, from which he retired as a division manager of administration after 32 years.
By 1966, he was in his first political battle, opposing the sewer proposed by the county.
In 1976, he co-chaired “Yes on Malibu,” the first cityhood effort, when cityhood lost by only 104 votes.
During the 1970s, he challenged the Waterworks District 29 growth plans and established the corner-to-corner beachfront stringline test, only recently changed by the Malibu City Council.
In the late 1980s, he again fought successfully against the proposed sewer system.
In May 1992, he was appointed to fill a City Council seat, and in April 1994, he was elected overwhelmingly to a four-year term, the highest vote getter in the election. He retired from the council in 1998.
He describes his hobbies as walking, reading and grumbling.
He and Emily have been married 42 years and have two grown sons.
Jeanette Maginnis
Jeanette Maginnis is a busy lady. Parent of two, practicing attorney, executive director of the Keep Christ in Christmas project, Malibu Bar Association member and vice president, creator of a continuing education program for Malibu attorneys. “We have had continuing education for attorneys for the past five years,” she says. “I just kind of make sure it’s still alive all the time.”
Keeping the program alive is no small task, either in continuing the process for lawyers or for the Keep Christ in Christmas program. “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into,” she says about the Christmas project, which involves year-round fund raising, organization and communicating to the community that the project invites all sectors of religious interest to participate. “I was elected as executive director in September of 1997,” she says about the job. “It’s more complex than it appears.”
Her approach to both community activities is impressive. Perhaps her European background, strong opinion about family life and community awareness and concern for Malibu have contributed to her devotion as a parent, professional and Dolphin Award recipient. “I wanted to do something that would help my daughter and give her a sense of community. I have found that, by doing these activities, I’ve become more involved on a day-to-day basis in my community. It’s made me more cognizant of what’s going on.”
Maginnis, along with her husband, also an attorney, and family have lived in Malibu for 24 years.
Ed and Dorothy Stotsenberg
Ed and Dorothy Stotsenberg sponsor everything Malibu.
Longtime Malibu residents, they first rented a home on Big Rock, moved inland to own and train horses and now live on a 44-acre mountaintop off Encinal Canyon.
Supporters of classical music, they sponsor the Stotsenberg Recital Series at Pepperdine and the Stotsenberg Classical Guitar Competition every June at Pepperdine. “That brings a lot of attention from all over the world to Pepperdine,” Ed says. “Some of the greatest guitarists in the world come.”
He began studying the guitar to keep his brain active after retirement from his CPA practice. Currently, he concertizes in homes around Malibu.
A former journalist, Dorothy serves as the education chair for the Pepperdine Center for the Arts Guild, which offers tickets to schoolchildren — 500 at a time, some 20,000 in a year — to special daytime performances by visiting artists. She also serves as an officer and member of the guild’s executive board.
Both serve the Malibu Presbyterian Church, where she is president of the Women’s Guild and he offers financial strategy.
Race-winning competitors themselves, they coach a group of master runners, people age 40 and up, every Tuesday and Thursday at the Pepperdine track, which also bears the Stotsenberg name. “We’ve had some good increases in speed,” he says. “Walt Keller has certainly picked up in speed and endurance.” Ed Stotsenberg began running at age 63 when he burned his hands on sumac and needed an activity. Dorothy Stotsenberg followed later still, when she needed an escape from construction on their home.
Maud-Ann Sunderland
“To see children that were not necessarily great ballplayers make a great play” is among the highlights that Little League President Maud-Ann Sunderland places at the top of her list. As if heading the Malibu league for the past two years doesn’t keep this mother of two busy enough, she has also put in a long stint as PTA president at Juan Cabrillo Elementary School.
Now, her energies among the city’s youth are recognized by a Dolphin Award, but the Swedish-born Sunderland makes a point to include other volunteers and board members in this acknowledgment. “There are many people out there that work really hard in the PTA and youth organizations, and the kids would not get along without them.”
She married Paul, an American, in 1978. Their daughter, Natasha, is 16, and their son, Leif, is 11. She became active in the schools through Natasha.
She and Paul met because of sports. “It was at the student games in Bulgaria, like an Olympics back in the ’70s,” she recalls. “Paul played volleyball for the U.S., and I was on the national fencing team for Sweden. It was love at first sight.”
Her commitment to youth and activity is evident when she discusses “inclusion” in Malibu Little League since her involvement — “making it more even, with less emphasis on all-stars and more emphasis on everybody being able to play as much as possible.”
Destination Malibu and Paul Spooner, Jannis Swerman and Alan Goldschneider
When PCH reopened to traffic in November after a crippling landslide, it was cause for celebration throughout the city and a crowning achievement for Destination Malibu. A 1998 Dolphin Award is shared by three of its most prominent members — Paul Spooner of Duke’s Malibu, Jannis Swerman of Granita and Alan Goldschneider of the Malibu Beach Inn.
Together with other local business leaders, they kept the pressure on to get the road open, not only on time but ahead of schedule. As general manager of Duke’s, Spooner saw his business drop off dramatically due to the road closure — this on top of an already bad year due to El Nino. Spooner helped re-establish Destination Malibu — an off-shoot of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce. The organization is designed to promote Malibu businesses as well as its scenic beauty.
Goldschneider took over at the Malibu Beach Inn two years ago. “When I came out here, the community didn’t realize the benefits of working together,” he says. Swerman says, “We wanted to create a better business environment.”
These businesses not only support the tax base, but they donate their time and money to everything from local environmental programs to school fund-raisers and will continue to promote a positive image of Malibu.
But this year, the group will be best remembered for its tireless efforts to get Malibu moving again. Says Swerman, “It was a David and Goliath battle, but it shows you can do it if you try.”
