Jan Curran -- The Tribute Continues

This is my dear friend Jan Curran as I'll always remember her: confident and elegant.

Everyone who saw yesterday's blog post knows that Jan passed away Monday evening.

She had lupus most of her adult life, but she made the most of it. She battled cancer for the past 15 years or so, and it was that awful disease that ultimately took her away from those of us who loved her.

Even in her last months of life, appearance mattered to Jan.


Five or six years ago (I've lost track), she moved to Ventura where the weather is cooler. She learned to accept residing at an assisted living facility, where she made great friends who were all ancient compared to her. It was a very nice place as these places go.

She even wrote a book about her experiences there:


I bought multiple copies when it was published about a year ago. On his blog, her cousin Mike Barer describes Active Senior Living as "a warm hearted comedy, based on life in a senior living center," and that's a very good take on it. I would add "touching" to that. It's part fact, part fiction and a great read.

You can order a copy here.

Jan started a Facebook page for Active Senior Living here.

And of course there was the blog Jan started after she moved to Ventura. We all got to see, through her, what it was like to adjust to the place and make friends. Plus she kept us caught up on the goings-on with her family.

Aside from the obvious, one of the things that annoyed Jan about chemotherapy treatments was the lack of enough current magazines and books to go around. So she began taking her own magazines to the hospital to share with fellow chemotherapy patients, and the Jan Curran Fan Club was born.

A few years ago I headed to the desert for the inaugural gathering of the Jan Curran Fan Club. I stayed at her house (she lived in La Quinta then) and we drove to the Palm Springs Tennis Club for a wonderful luncheon where 50 or 60 people gathered in an outdoor pavilion. Magazines and paperbacks were everybody's ticket in. It was a long but productive day, and Jan was exhausted by the time we got back to La Quinta. We had a fun yet low-key slumber party, just the two of us, and lingered over breakfast and a long visit the next morning.

Everyone who was there that day took a vow to donate magazines and paperbacks to chemotherapy units, and the word spread to as far away as England and Germany.

Recently Mike Barer established a Facebook page for the Jan Curran Fan Club. How about joining it in Jan's memory?

There is an article in today's Palm Springs Desert Sun about Jan's passing (thank you, Lee Goldberg).

I miss my dear friend. My heart is breaking.

XXOO, Jan. Heaven awaits.

My Friend Jan

Forgive me for not posting a Mystery History photo this week.

My very dear friend Jan Curran passed away last night. She had been battling cancer for the better part of 15 years. She kept fighting it and winning, then would get knocked down again and claw her way back.

I wrote about her in this 2008 blog post and this one last year.

Rest in peace, my dear.

Palm Springs, AKA Memory Lane

I was in Palm Springs Thursday through Sunday, hanging with nine long-time PIO pals. Most of us met 20 or more years ago when we became involved in the then-new California Association of Public Information Officials (CAPIO) and over the years became great friends for life.

On my way out of town on Sunday, I stopped by some of my old haunts and took some photos to share with you.

My children and I lived in Palm Springs for a few years before they flew the coop and I moved to Pasadena.

I loved living at 225 N. Orchid Tree Lane in the Sunrise Park neighborhood. It's a classic 1958 Alexander Home, a style that is iconic in Palm Springs. Many of the Hollywood elite of the '50s and '60s lived in this neighborhood.


Hey, it's for sale! $399,000 moves you in. Three bedrooms, two baths, living room, family room, circular driveway, plus a big pool and grapefruit trees in back.

We moved to Palm Springs from Walnut Creek because my friend Jan Curran had gotten a job as a senior account executive at The Jones Agency. We had worked together at a little agency in Lafayette, near Walnut Creek. When she told Palm Springs kingpin Milton W. Jones, president of The Jones Agency and publisher of Palm Springs Life Magazine, about me and explained that she and I were a dynamic duo, he flew me down at his expense, put me up for a couple of days, grilled me to the max about my experience and hired me as a senior AE.

So Jan and I continued our working relationship and our friendship at this building, owned by Milt. You can't tell from the boxy front of the building, but The Jones Agency is on the second floor. My office had a sliding glass door behind the desk that led to an inner courtyard with lush gardens and a big fountain. It was pretty nice.


(Side note: As I write this on Tuesday night, I just got off the phone with Jan and we agreed that we worked for a couple of freaks of nature!)

At The Jones Agency I developed major campaigns for clients including Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, The Living Desert and Las Casuelas Terraza. After I led an international tourism marketing campaign for my client the City of Palm Springs, the city made me an offer I couldn't refuse. That's when I first became a PIO for local government.

Speaking of iconic desert architecture, I worked here at Palm Springs City Hall.


My office was straight across the front lobby.

The mayor when I first worked there was the beloved Frank Bogert, an honest-to-goodness cowboy who became a PR man and photographer and was largely responsible for putting Palm Springs on the map as a celebrity playground during Hollywood's golden age.

About 20 years ago the city commissioned a sculptor to create bronze statue of Mayor Bogert. It stands in front of City Hall.


He was very kind to me and a pleasure to work with. After he left office he hired me to edit his book "Palm Springs: The First Hundred Years" and we had great fun working on it together. That book sits on my coffee table to this day and I cherish the inscription he wrote to me.

Sonny Bono ran against Mayor Bogert in a hotly contested race. During the campaign, Sonny often compared himself to Clint Eastwood, who was the mayor of Carmel at the time.

I'll never forget Mayor Bogert's most famous quote: "Comparing Sonny to Clint is like comparing chicken shit to chicken salad."

Sonny won, and at City Hall we prepared for the inevitable culture shock. I hit the ground running on a massive learning curve to soak up everything I could about entertainment media, with Sonny's help of course. He also taught me a lot about promotion. He started the Palm Springs Film Festival from nothing but his movie industry contacts, and I'm proud to say the first meeting was in my office! Those were heady times, I tell you.

To this day I can write his signature flawlessly, which I did on countless promotional t-shirts, posters and other items that were sent far and wide, in the U.S. and abroad. (I just tested my forgery skills and I've still got it!) That merchandise added a lot of money to the city's coffers.


I learned of Sonny's tragic death when a friend called me from Palm Springs before it even hit the media. By then I worked for the City of Pasadena. God, it was just horrible and it's still hard to believe. I immediately wrote a note to his wife Mary, who used to always stop by my office at Palm Springs City Hall for a chat when she made her daily visit with their then-baby boy Chesare.

That's my trip down memory lane. Thanks for humoring me!

We really can't turn back the hands of time but it sure is nice to reminisce.

Those Other Blogs

I received one blog comment and a couple of emails from people asking about the significance of the non-local blogs listed on the right-hand side of this page.

40-Ton Tourists -- My long-time pal Mike and his wife, Lori. Lori was a successful real estate agent who got out of the business when the downturn began, then took the course to become a trucker! She and Mike always loved taking long road trips anyway, so this was a dream come true. And now Mike, who is a fellow PIO, is getting ready to retire and join Lori full-time on the road.

Jan Curran Events -- Jan and I first met in 1981, I think, when she was Jan Goldberg and we both lived in Walnut Creek and worked as account executives for the same public relations agency in the Bay Area, for the nuttiest loon of an agency president who ever lived. We made him oodles of money with our hard work, clever campaigns and superb client relations. She moved to Palm Springs to work as a senior account executive at the Jones Agency, convinced agency president and Palm Springs kingpin Milton W. Jones that she and I were a team to be reckoned with (she was right), and Milt paid all expenses for me and my children to move to P.S., where I also was a senior account executive at the agency. Among my many other clients, I handled the City of Palm Springs, which, after I left the agency, hired me to do their marketing, publicity and protocol in-house. I got to work side-by-side every day with Sonny Bono, and I've been a public servant ever since. (Jan was hired to do network TV commentary and interviews for two or three hours before Sonny's funeral started. It was a horribly sad day for us all.) But I digress. Jan went on to become society editor of the Palm Springs Desert Sun (which we used to call the Desperate Scum), then retired to do occasional consulting work after a serious health issue developed. She has been battling it for years but she keeps on tickin' and has kept her sense of humor through it all, which is half the battle. Now she lives in Ventura where it's much cooler and better for her health.

Ventura City Manager Blog -- I get asked all the time what's happening with Rick Cole and what he's doing , so I decided to add his blog so everybody can see for themselves what he's up to. Rick is a great dad, which is #1 in my book. By the way, Jan and Rick don't know each other.

OK!!! Now that that's out of the way, I'm off to San Diego Thursday morning to attend my granddaughter Kimberly's high school graduation (yes, the jig is up -- I'm a geezer), then back here on Saturday, and then. . .

-- drum roll please --

. . .HOPPING A PLANE FOR LUDWIGSHAFEN AND JARVENPAA ON SUNDAY!!!

Stay tuned!