Re: January 16 - 18, 2009
Michael Jackson Mentionings for Jan 18, 2009:
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090118/A_NEWS/901170314
Tragedies strengthen family's love
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var isoPubDate = 'January 18, 2009'
By
Roger Phillips
Record Staff Writer
January 18, 2009 6:00 AM
On a 100-degree day a summer or two ago, Elizabeth Pha accidentally locked herself out of the north Stockton home she shares with her parents. Her father, John, suggested she wait in the garage for someone to come home and let her in.
Time passed, and as Pha waited, the battery died on her cell phone. John Pha, working in Livermore, tried calling again. When he couldn't reach her, he grew frantic with worry.
Soon, there was a knock on the garage door.
"Open up, open up," the voice said. "We're the police, Stockton police."
The concerned father had called the police, who made sure his daughter was safe and all right.
It's easy to understand why her parents are so protective.
They long ago assimilated to the homeland they escaped to after a desperate flight 30 years ago from the murderous Khmer Rouge. Elizabeth Pha even sang her way to the second round of the Fox talent show "American Idol" in 2005.
But the memories the Pha family (pronounced "Pa") carried from Cambodia remain fresh and painful.
And they also carry the memories of the Cleveland School playground 20 years ago. Elizabeth was there Jan. 17, 1989, and saw a boy, 9-year-old Rathanar Or, killed in front of her.
Elizabeth was physically unharmed, but these are memories that affect the way the Pha family lives.
"I just feel like the world is not a safe place," said Elizabeth Pha, now 27. "Every time I walk out of the house, I put on this big, heavy armor of protection, because I may never know when a stray bullet may come and hit me. That's how I feel as an adult today. It's painful, you know?"
Pha's mother, Erica, added, "We have a bad memory from the past."
Essence of family
This is a family that watches out for one another. When Erica Pha was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, Elizabeth Pha moved home from Southern California to take care of her mother. So did her 29-year-old brother, Henry.
But the protectiveness of parents to children sometimes was overwhelming.
"I always check all my kids' school all the time when they attended high school or elementary school," said 53-year-old Erica Pha, who has been cured of her cancer.
Out of love and understanding, Elizabeth Pha repressed her rebelliousness during her years at Stagg High School.
"But inside, I was, like, 'Get me out of here. I'm struggling. I need my freedom,'" she said. "It was like fighting a war of independence."
References to war are not made idly in this family.
Elizabeth Pha was 1 when her parents escaped with her from Cambodia. They were detained several times by the Khmer Rouge during a 300-mile walk through the jungle that took five weeks. Erica Pha was sick with malaria, but somehow they reached a refugee camp in Thailand.
"I almost gave up the journey," said Erica Pha, who lost her mother and two brothers to the Khmer Rouge genocide along with perhaps 50 members of her extended family. "I was so tired. I did not have much energy to carry (Elizabeth) sometimes. My husband took her from me. I fell down all the time. We could not see well at nighttime. My husband just held my hand. 'Please, keep going, keep going, we will be fine.' ... We almost got killed so many times."
They made it to the United States in 1984, living at first in suburban Seattle.
They later left Seattle for Stockton, hearing about the large resettlement of Cambodians here.
Americanization continues
They had finally found a home, Elizabeth Pha said. Her father considered the United States utopia because of the opportunity it provides.
But that peace was shattered by the Cleveland shootings. Elizabeth Pha was playing tag with her friends when the horror began. She said she knew all the children who died that day, and she saw Rathanar fall right in front of her. She ran inside. A teacher told her to get under a desk.
"Jesus, Jesus, please help, please make the guns stop, please," she prayed. The shooting stopped.
Nightmares ruled her sleep in the weeks that followed. But she said the glimpse she got of Michael Jackson when he visited Stockton a few weeks after the shootings was "soothing."
A year passed. The Phas became citizens in 1990. They took American names. Chandara (it means "the moon and the stars") became Elizabeth. Erica bashfully declined to reveal her Cambodian name.
In 1991, the Phas continued their assimilation. They converted from Buddhism to Christianity. They attend St. John's Episcopal Church in Stockton.
Family members are driven to give expression to all they have endured.
Elizabeth and Henry are helping their parents with a manuscript that recounts the family's escape from Cambodia. They hope to get it published.
Elizabeth Pha's memories of Michael Jackson remain as powerful as ever 20 years later. Though she did not reach the finals of "American Idol," she continues to pursue a career in music. She writes her own songs and has self-recorded a CD of her music. She has yet to write a song about the Cleveland shootings, but thoughts of that day still weigh heavily.
"I just feel not a lot of people understand it," she said. "I almost feel like I'm alone in my suffering. I've been down for a while. Resilience is my only survival. I go up, but I can't see the light. I keep going back down. I'm trying to get past it."
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090118/A_NEWS/901170317/-1/A_NEWS
By
Roger Phillips
Record Staff Writer
January 18, 2009 6:00 AM
The next morning, the school doors swung open to a much less innocent place.
The Stockton Police Department had released the crime scene the night before after concluding that drifter Patrick Purdy had acted alone before killing himself. Workers had spent the night making repairs.
Cleveland Elementary School Principal Pat Busher, trained in psychology, decided in conjunction with Stockton Unified Superintendent Mary Gonzales Mend that the school's teachers, staff and students needed to return immediately to begin healing together.
Late in the afternoon Jan. 17, 1989, Busher had visited the Park Village Apartments and appealed to members of the Cambodian community to bring their children back the next day.
Southeast Asian children were 70 percent of Cleveland's student body at the time. On Jan. 18, only 227 of Cleveland's 975 students returned.
"I remember clearly there were five students who came back to class that day," said fourth-grade teacher Vicki Garduno, who still teaches at Cleveland.
"There were more counselors than there were students," said Shannon Lopez, now 26, who was a first-grader at the time. She returned to school the day after her 6-year-old friend Ram Chun was killed.
Marianne Castillo, an instructional assistant at Cleveland who now works at Walton Special Center, still wonders about the wisdom of reopening so quickly.
"We just walked around in a daze that next day," she said. "There just weren't many children. ... I don't think they should have been here. I almost felt like we were told it didn't happen: 'Just come back to work.' I don't think it gave enough reverence to the children that were hurt, that were killed, and all that the staff went through."
But third-grade teacher Vickie Gake, still teaching at Cleveland, said the immediate return was therapeutic.
"Probably, because if I didn't (return), it would be scary," she said. "It was scary anyway."
The days and months after the shootings were a time of struggle and grief, a time of teachers and other school employees trying to carry on, a time for a community to pull together, a time of cultural differences magnified, a time of parents attempting the heartbreaking task of explaining the unexplainable to their children.
Cambodian community leader Sovanna Koeurt's son, Viseth, had lost his best friend, 9-year-old Rathanar Or, in the shootings.
"Mom, can I ask God to have Rathanar come alive again?" Viseth asked Koeurt. "Mom, is he coming back?''
Caseworkers from the San Joaquin County district attorney's victim/witness office provided assistance to survivors of the five dead children and to families of the 31 wounded.
Their involvement began the day of the shootings and in some cases continued for months. There was a language barrier with some Southeast Asian families, but the sorrow was transcendent.
"That gut-wrenching wailing," Chris Hurley of victim/witness said. "I'll never forget that."
Staff members with the county agency helped plan funerals and burials. They tried to protect Southeast Asian families from the intrusions of the worldwide media. They learned about the culture of these newcomers to Stockton.
One hundred counselors were brought in from various places - other school districts and private practices. Pacific Bell flew in three Vietnamese interpreters from its Orange County office. A team of counselors traveled to Stockton from Winnetka, Ill., where there had been a school shooting eight months earlier.
The Delta Blood Bank received donations from 260 people the day of the shootings and gave out 200 units of blood - twice the usual amount - to hospitals in San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
Monetary donations poured in. Among other things, the money would be used for college scholarships for Cleveland children. University of the Pacific established a scholarship program for Cambodians. Pacific students began tutoring Cambodian children.
An audience of 300 attended a one-hour service at Faith Lutheran Church, next to the school, the night after the shootings. Other schools held assemblies and class discussions. Busher arranged a Buddhist ceremony at Cleveland at the request of Cambodian parents to rid the playground of ghosts.
Flags flew at half-staff around Stockton.
Teddy bears were sent to Cleveland from Edmonton, Alberta. Origami cranes came from a U.S. school. Years later, Cleveland students would send origami cranes to Scotland after a school shooting there.
Six days after the tragedy, 3,800 people - including then-Gov. George Deukmejian - crowded inside the Stockton Memorial Civic Auditorium for an hourlong Buddhist-Christian memorial service honoring the dead children.
Afterward, a mile-long funeral procession made its way to Stockton Rural Cemetery.
Three weeks after the shootings, pop star Michael Jackson came to Stockton.
He visited every Cleveland classroom, visited parents at nearby Central United Methodist Church and visited children who were still in the hospital.
One hundred days after the shootings, Cambodian Buddhists held religious services to free the souls of the dead so they could go to heaven.
Mental health workers remained for months, nearly one for each of Cleveland's 35 classrooms.
Some teachers considered leaving the school. Some remain there 20 years later.
"I asked to transfer," Garduno said. "Pat Busher asked me to stay for counseling. And I did. I stayed, worked through it. It was a place to be. It was like home. And we all bonded together."
http://www.centredaily.com/living/story/1067016.html
Against this backdrop, you watch Satrapi grow up. Like an American child, she questions authority. She likes
Michael Jackson and rock music. She treasures a new pair of Nikes her parents bring her from Turkey.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=8934d578-dba7-4399-8314-74b4e3704e1a
Meetup.com is a network of do-it-yourself social groups whose slogan is "Use the Internet to get off the Internet!" The site's 4.7 million members in 3,600 cities gather for user-created events that revolve around a broad range of interests, including a
Michael Jackson fan club in Ottawa, a Vancouver group for tall people, another for Montreal pug owners, and a Calgary witches group with 200 members.
The singles' social club Meet Market Adventures includes 120,000 members -- two-thirds of them Canadian -- in 13 cities, including Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and Edmonton.
http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/249908/
The former professional dancer - he trained in ballet and worked for
Michael Jackson and at Chippendales - said he sold five franchises at $30,000 apiece and agreed to collect a weekly 8 percent royalty fee. He said he had 30 prospective franchisees, but wanted to limit growth for fear of overextending the brand
Michael Jackson HIStory for Jan 18, 2009:
1980 - Michael Jackson won the Favorite Male Artist, Soul/R&B, Favorite Album, Soul/R&B and Favorite Single, Soul/R&B categories at the seventh annual American Music Awards.
1996 - Lisa Marie Presley filed for divorce from Michael Jackson.
you can watch it inside of this link o.k 
