Los Angeles Times - 26.11.2019

LATIMES.COM TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2019B

latimes.com/placeobituary

Michael Leeroy Brockman, age 74, of Westport, CT, passedawayMonday, October 14, 2019 at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Born August 7, 1945 in Orlando, FL, the son of the late Sula, a homemaker, and Holmes Brockman, an air traffic controller, he was raised in Central Florida and graduated from Edgewater High School in1963. Michael entered the U.S. Army and became an educator and nuclear weapons specialist. He graduated from the University of Central Florida in 1975. Michael worked as Road Test Editor at Motor Trend Magazine while living in Los Angeles. He began racing professionally in 1979 and competed in events such as the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. He went on to work as an actor & stuntman in films such as Harry & Son (1984), Fat Man And Little Boy (1989), RoadtoPerdition (2002) among others. Michael moved to Connecticut and had two children Keleigh (b. 1996) and Spencer (b. 2000). He lived and worked in CT until his passing, and was currently the owner of Mazda of Milford. In addition to his parents he was predeceased by his sister, Suzanne Brockman Bunce. A celebration of Michael’s life will be held on Sunday, December 8th, from 2:00 p.m. to 6: p.m. at his dealership 915 Boston Post Rd in Milford CT. If you would like to attend please contact his children or email [email protected]. In lieu of flowers, friends may consider a contribution in Michael’s memory to the Boggy Creek Gang Camp, 30500 Brantley Branch Rd., Eustis, FL,

For information or to offer an
online condolence please visit http://www.
SpearFuneralHome.com

BROCKMAN, Michael Leeroy

June 24, 1924 - November 21, 2019

ARATA, Kiyoshi

Resident of Huntington Beach. Kiyo passed away peacefully at the age of 95. He was born in Fresno. During WWII he served in the Army’s 740th Tank Battalion in Europe. He worked for 25 years at McDonnell Douglas. He enjoyed attending family events, travel, and he continued his regimen of lifting weights and working out daily until the age of 94. He was preceded in death by his parents Goichi and Fude Arata and siblings Eva Nakamura, Fusaye Nakamoto, Masaye Nagatani, Takeko Nakashima, and Joe Arata. He is survived by many nieces and nephews. Interment is private. For anyone interested in making a charitable contribution in Kiyo’s memory, the family requests that donations can be made to the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles.

AGUILAR, Gabriel

Service were held on 11/21/2019, at 10:00 AM. Armstrong Family Mortuary

OBITUARY NOTICES

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Always loved Always remembered

February 19, 1950 - November 27, 2012

Anthony W. Rogers

In Memoriam

Mount Sinai Memorial Parks - Simi Valley 800-600- http://www.mountsinaiparks.org

ZIEVE, Stanley

Mount Sinai Memorial Parks - Hollywood Hills 800-600- http://www.mountsinaiparks.org

SZNEER, Isabelle

Miyoko Violet Imazu, age 87, passed away on October 26, 2019. She is survived by husband Roy Kazuo Imazu, 4 children, and 9 grandchildren. Also was predeceased by sister Kiku Yoshida and survived by brother Hiro (Tommy) Uyeda. Special thanks to caregivers Tessie, Magda, Lucky and Jazmin. Memorial service and burial for immediate family was previously held on November 9th. Public Celebration of Life service will be on Saturday, November 30th at 10:00 am at Crossway Church of the San Fernando Valley, 9610 Haddon Ave, Pacoima, CA 91331. Family requests casual or “Aloha” attire. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center (SFVJACC), 12953 Branford St. Arleta, CA 91331. http://www.fukuimortuary.com 213-626-

IMAZU, Miyoko Violet

Mount Sinai Memorial Parks - Hollywood Hills 800-600- http://www.mountsinaiparks.org

GOLDMAN, Feny

July 18, 1928 - November 7, 2019

ELSHOFF, Eldred “Cal”

Eldred “Cal” Elshoff, 91, born on July 18, 1928 in New Knoxville, Ohio, passedawaypeacefully in his home on November 7, 2019. He was preceded in death by his wife, Irene, on March 4, 2019, and by his granddaughter, Marisa, in 2004. A rosary will be said for Cal at St. Bede Church on Friday, November 29 at 7:30pm. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated at 9:30am on Saturday, November 30, also at St. Bede Church. Burial will follow at San Fernando M Please visit http://www.cabotandsonsfh. com forfurther informationand details.

December 23, 1936 - November 17, 2019

BURTIS, Carol Ann

Carol will be greatly missed for her unique sense of humor and immense care for others. She is survived by her 3 children Glenn, Lauren and Chris. Services will be held at 12 noon on 12/02/2019 at Riverside National Cemetery where she will join her husband Stanley Burtis.

rived in Los Angeles in 1925,
the year before his son was
born, and began building.
The father and son, indi-
vidually and in collabora-
tion, executed hundreds of
houses and civic projects.
Many of them received lau-
rels from the American In-
stitute of Architects, were
designated as landmarks,
and made alluring motion-
picture cameos — as Rich-
ard Neutra’s 1929 Lovell
Health House (the first
steel-frame dwelling in the
United States) did in the
1997 movie “Hollywood Con-
fidential.”
Between them, Richard
and Dion Neutra exerted
their influence upon the
built environment and visu-
al aesthetics of Los Angeles
for nearly a century.
The lithe and airy struc-
tures were executed in a pal-
ette of no-nonsense glass,
steel, concrete and wood —
gleaming and seemingly
machine-made. At once ele-
gant and breezy, and articu-
lating Southern Califor-
nians’ desire for an indoor-
outdoor lifestyle, Neutra
architecture achieved global
renown as a symbol of Los
Angeles, much like the mu-
sic of Brian Wilson, the art of
Ed Ruscha and the novels of
Raymond Chandler.
Dion Neutra continued
the practice after his father’s
death, completing buildings
of his own, such as the Hunt-
ington Beach Central Li-
brary and Cultural Center,
declared “magnificent” by
The Times when it opened in

With its soothing,
earth-toned interiors, copi-
ous plantings and water fea-
tures, the facility has the
feeling of a futuristic pavilion
sprouting from a botanical
garden. It remains a vibrant
focal point of the community
and, despite some altera-
tions over time, is arguably
the younger Neutra’s most
significant project.
But the architect was
perhaps best known for his
work as an aggressive and
sometimes prickly steward
of the Neutra legacy. He
campaigned vigorously for
the preservation of modern-
ist buildings, including his
father’s Cyclorama Center

at Gettysburg National Mili- tary Park, a 1962 visitor facility that the National Park Service earmarked for demolition in the 1990s. That battle dragged on for more than a decade and generated national head- lines as architectural historians, architects, and fans of modernism fought Civil War historians, reenactors and the National Park Service to a standstill. Neutra helped collect thousands of letters in defense of the structure, including one from Frank Gehry, who wrote that Neu- tra’s building “reflects the highest ideals of his own time, and deserves the highest appreciation of ours.” The stalemate was broken in 2013, when the Cyclorama Center — once deemed eligi- ble for the National Register of Historic Places and listed as “endangered” by the World Monuments Fund — was demolished. In Southern California’s overheated real estate mar- ket, Neutra houses can carry outsize price tags, evidence

of their significance and de- sirability. Even so, an alarm- ing number of them have been bought as tear-downs. “There should be a national will to save these buildings,” Neutra told The Times in

“It shouldn’t have to be
a one-man crusade.”
Dion Neutra was born in
Los Angeles on Oct. 8, 1926.
“My dad started me drawing
when I was 11,” Neutra re-
called in 2001. By 1944, Dion
Neutra, then a 17-year-old
high school junior, was iden-
tified by the Magazine of
Architecture as a collabora-
tor with his famous father.
After service in the U.S.
Navy during World War II,
Neutra pursued his archi-
tecture studies at USC,
graduating in 1950. Neutra
then went to work in his fa-
ther’s firm. Accolades came
quickly: an Honor Award
from the American Institute
of Architects in 1954, fol-
lowed by an AIA Merit
Award the following year.
Father and son worked
together through the 1950s
amid patches of turbulence.

In 1961, Dion Neutra described “frustration, resent- ment and distortion” in the relationship. After a brief split, they were again joined in practice from 1965 until Richard Neutra’s death in

“Artistically,” his
mother said, “they got along
very well.”
Some of the tactics the
younger Neutra employed in
the name of preservation
verged on guerrilla theater.
In the summer of 2004, he
turned up at the Cyclorama
Center in Gettysburg with a
length of heavy chain, dem-
onstrating how he would at-
tach himself to the building
if and when a demolition
squad arrived. “I’ll confront
the bulldozers and say,
‘Take me with the building,
gentlemen,’ ” he proclaimed,
as battlefield tourists and
broadcast news teams gath-
ered to watch.
After the Cyclorama
Center was demolished, the
ground where it had stood
for 51 years was groomed in
emulation of the battlefield
terrain of 1863. The aging

Neutra did not, in the end, chain himself to the building. The loss was also person- al. “They become part of who you are,” he said of the buildings he and his father cre- ated. “So to take one of those down is like cutting off part of my arm.” In the early 2000s, after Neutra architecture, and all things midcentury modern, had swung back into vogue, Neutra allowed the licensing of a limited number of Neu- tra designs — a typeface, fur- niture, house numbers — to House Industries. Asking prices for Neutra homes were on the rise. Neu- tra found that they had now become fetish objects. He

also discovered that the avowed Neutra fans who bought them often had little interest in collaborating with him on restorations, in- terpreting his overtures as meddlesome or his inten- tions as worryingly purist. “We keep getting people hav- ing theirinterpretation of ‘what Neutra would have wanted,’ ” he bristled, “when Neutra is around to be asked.” Neutra maintained a stu- dio in his Silver Lake home, the Reunion House, de- signed by his father in 1950. From there, he served as executive consultant and project director of the Neu- tra Institute for Survival Through Design, a nonprofit established in 1962 to ad- vance modernist and eco- logical principles, and wrote several books, including a self-published memoir in

The nearby Neutra Of-
fice Building, at 2379 Glen-
dale Blvd., was added to the
National Register of His-
toric Places in 2004.
Neutra’s final project was
a house in Honduras for the
younger of his two sons, Nick
Neutra, completed in 2018
and the subject of a 2017 doc-
umentary short, “Neutra in
Roatan.” In addition to his
sons and brother, he is sur-
vived by his wife, Lynn
Smart Neutra; two grand-
children; one great-grand-
child; and two stepchildren
from a previous marriage.
Preserving architecture
as he did, Neutra admitted,
involved risks of its own. “My
wife gives me hell because
I’ve kept the original 1950s
Case toilet that doesn’t flush
right,” the architect said of
his own house. “ ‘Listen,’ I
tell her. ‘This is the toilet
that Richard Neutra sat on
— I’m not getting rid of it.’ ”

Rozzo is a special correspondent.

DION NEUTRA, 1926 - 2019

Son was a link to architectural titans

[Neutra,from B1]

Wally SkalijLos Angeles Times GLOBALLY RENOWNED Neutra, shown near his Silver Lake home, campaigned vigorously for the preservation of modernist buildings, including his father’s Cyclorama Center at Gettysburg National Military Park. It ultimately was razed.

OAKLAND — A former
Bay Area tour operator
agreed Monday to plead
guilty to serving as an unreg-
istered agent for China in ex-
change for a possible re-
duced prison sentence.
Xuehua Edward Peng
agreed in court to a four-year
prison term and a fine of
$30,000 in a plea deal negoti-
ated with prosecutors after
they charged him with being
an illegal foreign agent who
delivered U.S. national secu-
rity information to officials
in China.
U.S. District Judge Hay-
wood S. Gilliam Jr., however,
declined to accept the plea
deal until sentencing, which
is scheduled for March.
Peng, 57, a naturalized
U.S. citizen, has been in fed-
eral custody since late Sep-

tember, when he was arrested at his Hayward resi- dence to the surprise of neighbors, who knew him as a nice person with a taste for luxury cars. On Monday, he appeared in red inmate garb and spoke through a Mandarin interpreter. He told the judge that he understood the terms of the agreement and that he was guilty. It did not appear that he had family or other supporters in the room. Prosecutors said Peng, under orders from a handler in China, left cash in hotel rooms in exchange for classi- fied national security information on small electronic storage devices. The U.S. was never at risk because the information left for Peng was provided by an FBI double agent who had also been approached for spy work by the Chinese government but decided to in- form the U.S. government instead, prosecutors have said. In the plea agreement, Peng said he was ap-

proached by a state security official with China during a business trip in 2015 and agreed to collect and deliver information. He made six trips between 2015 and 2018, leaving as much as $20,000 in envelopes at a time. “I was never informed of the contents of these devices and at no time learned what information was stored on them,” Peng said in the plea agreement. Peng was paid “at least $30,000 for the acts” he per- formed as a courier, accord- ing to the agreement. Com- munications were done by telephone at first and then by the encrypted chat plat- form WeChat. A seventh drop scheduled for August 2019 was de- layed. Peng was arrested the next month. Daniel Olmos, one of Peng’s attorneys, declined to comment after the hear- ing. “The plea speaks for it- self,” he said. If convicted at trial, Peng could face a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Investigators described him as a sightseeing operator in the San Francisco area for Chinese visitors and students. Public records list Peng as president of U.S. Tour and Travel in San Francisco, but no website for the company was found. Peng entered the country in 2001 on a temporary business visa. He became a lawful per- manent resident in 2006 following his marriage and was naturalized in September 2012. He has a background in mechanical engineering and is licensed in California as an acupuncturist. A magistrate judge de- nied his earlier request for a free federal lawyer, saying he had too many assets, and re- fused to let him out on bail given that he had an apart- ment and a mistress in China. FBI Director Christo- pher A. Wray has said China poses a more serious coun- terintelligence threat to the U.S. than any other country, including Russia.

Man says he served as agent for China

In plea deal in court,

former tour operator

in Bay Area agrees to

prison term and fine.

associated press

Engine teams were em-
bedded in neighborhoods to
defend homes in the fire’s
path, and bulldozers and
hand crews were at work
throughout the night dig-
ging into the dirt to create
containment lines around
the perimeter of the blaze.
Mandatory evacuations
were ordered for a large
swath of land about five
miles wide, including the
area of Highway 154 east to
Ontare Road and from Foot-
hill Road to the top of Ca-
mino Cielo. An evacuation
warning was issued for the
area north of Foothill Road
and from Ontare Road east
to Gibraltar Road.
There was no informa-
tion available Monday eve-
ning about whether any
homes have burned, said
Capt. Daniel Bertucelli, a
Santa Barbara County Fire

Department public information officer. “We’re going to fight fire throughout the night, and tomorrow when the sun comes up, we’ll get a better understanding of what sort of damage we have,” Bertu-

celli said. Winds were expected to increase, especially at higher elevations, until about 1 a.m., with some areas of the Santa Ynez Mountains expected to see gusts of up to 65 mph, ac-

cording to the weather service. Bertucelli said that as he was driving 55 mph down Highway 154 earlier in the evening, the fire was keeping up with him, growing along- side the roadway. Once he reached lower elevations, the wind was much lighter. The fire burned through dense, old brush in an area that hadn’t burned since the Painted Cave fire in 1990. It was also dry Monday, with relative humidity reported at 14% in the hills where the fire was burning. Meteorologists were fore- casting a decrease in wind through the early morning hours Tuesday, and the area was expected to see rain Tuesday afternoon or evening. “Hopefully Mother Na- ture will help us out tomorrow,” Bertucelli said.

Fire threatens homes above Santa Barbara

A BULLDOZER builds a fire line downhill from Camino Cielo in Santa Barbara County on Monday.

Mike EliasonSanta Barbara County Fire Department

[Fire,from B1]

Los Angeles Times - 26.11.2019

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