S IGNA L T R IBU N E Serving Bixby Knolls, California Heights, Los Cerritos, Wrigley and Signal Hill
Your Weekly Community Newspaper
VOL. XXXVIII NO. 18
April 29, 2016
‘...under whose shade you do not expect to sit’ St. Mary personnel planted trees in honor of Earth Day and a World War II veteran. Denny Cristales Editorial Assistant
More than 90 years of legacy came to a head at an Earth Day tree planting on April 22. Dignity Health–St. Mary Medical Center planted and dedicated magnolia trees in honor of the environmental holiday, but it most prominently directed its memorialization to a World War II veteran and the sisters who founded the hospital. World War II veteran Elmer McClintock passed away in February at the age of 97, but his legacy is fundamentally rooted on hospital grounds. McClintock was a member of the Sister Alphonsus Legacy Society, a group of members who have left gifts in their will or state trust to be donated to the hospital. “Through his passing, he left a legacy gift,” said Megan Martinez, manager of marketing and communications at Dignity Health–St. Mary Medical Center. “So, we thought there was no better way to recognize him and thank him for his efforts by memorializing him here with this
magnolia tree... It’s a great way to have your family remembered and to benefit the community.” McClintock was a big supporter of St. Mary Hospital. One of the things the World War II veteran loved about the center was the inclusion of single-patient rooms. “Private rooms were a real thing that he valued in his time that he had spent here at St. Mary,” Martinez said. The center received a donation of four trees from the City of Long Beach’s Sustainability Department. The trees also serve as a symbol to preserve nature and support the City’s widespread ecology efforts, said Sister Celeste Trahan, vice president of Mission Integration at St. Mary Medical Center. “In honor of Earth Day, we have focused our efforts on preservation of the Earth, the use of recycling so that we use our resources properly and to be able to share the Earth that we have with others,” Trahan said. “We are continually improving our efforts at supporting the ecology initiative within Dignity Health.” The tree-planting ceremony also served as a tribute to the sisters who founded the hospital 93 years ago. see DEDICATION page 8
Denny Cristales | Signal Tribune
Dignity Health– St. Mary Medical Center received a donation of four trees from the City of Long Beach’s Sustainability Department. Workers planted one of the trees on the west side of the hospital campus on April 22.
Checking out Current Signal Hill library closing its doors in preparation for new facility. Cory Bilicko Managing Editor
When the current Signal Hill Library location closes its doors for good this weekend, in preparation of being razed, library patrons need not worry, as all services and materials will soon be relocated to the nearby community center until a completely new, larger facility is built. That new library is expected to be completed by the spring of 2018, according to Aly Mancini, community services director for Signal Hill. “The new facility will be approximately three times the size of the current facility,” Mancini said, adding that it will be roughly 12,000 square feet. She said the new library will feature specific areas for each user
Cory Bilicko | Signal Tribune
Signal Hill City Librarian Judy Kamei (right) assists Burt Goldstein in checking out books in the current location of the library. Construction of a new one will commence in the next few weeks. In the meantime, library services will be temporarily relocated to the nearby community center.
group– kids, teens, seniors and students– as well as a rentable space for special events and an outdoor garden area. While that facility is being constructed, residents will have access to all the usual materials and services through the temporary loca-
Mother’s Day May 8th!
tion, beginning in early June. Judy Kamei, city librarian, said the move to the community center will involve removing all the books from the shelves so that the public works department can disassemble shelves on weekends to move them to the temporary spot. Library staff
will work on some Saturdays to use rented moving carts to transport the books to the center and reshelve them. Kamei and her staff of 12 are taking advantage of the transition to examine the condition and content of what the library has to offer. “As part of the moving process, we’re re-evaluating our collection,” she said. “We are discarding dated, worn, stained materials.” As for what constitutes dated materials, Kamei said it applies mostly to non-fiction, such as a résumé book that might characterize the World Wide Web as a new thing. “Certainly, any health information we do have to look at very carefully,” Kamei said. “Travel books that are more than a few years old [with] changes to addresses and locations that aren’t going to be talking about the social-media aspects of travel. So that will be what we’re looking at.” Additionally, some materials will need to be replenished. The Laura Ingalls Wilder books, for example,
April 29 through May 3, 2016
Friday
Partly Cloudy
68° Lo 56°
Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Tuesday
Partly Cloudy
Partly Cloudy
Partly Cloudy
Sunny
Lo 56°
Lo 55°
68°
Lo 56°
70°
74°
75° Lo 55°
This weekʼs weather forecast sponsored by:
Patricia’s Mexican Restaurant
Dine In
TAKE OUT
Check out our ad in the pet section on page 2!
Cinco de Mayo! $$16.00 Order your holiday tamales now! 5Celebrate OFF Buy 1Choose Shrimp Cocktail, from beef, chicken, pork, pinapple,
Choose from beef, chicken, pork, pineapple, 2 dinner plates per dozen sweet corn, or cheese w/ jalepenos sweet corn, or cheese w/jalapeños get second one 1/2 offstrawberry –Thursday only & 2 drinks when you purchase (with this ad)
will need to be replaced, as they have become worn from frequent use. “You discard because of condition, somewhat for content, and more for factual errors or innacuracies, newer materials available and declining popularity,” Kamei explained. The librarian, who has worked in Signal Hill for a year, said no services that are normally offered will be postponed or canceled because of the transition. “We will be open the same number of hours,” she said. “We will be checking out the same type of materials– books, DVDs, audio books. We will have computers. We will have Internet access. We will still be offering interlibrary loan. Every service now– all of our programming, our story time, book club, movie nights and such– we’ll still have. We may have to schedule them differently because we will not have a dedicated movie space in that building.” see LIBRARY page 15
Show Mom S ome love Send her a handmade arrangement like the one featured here! 4102 Orange Ave., Unit 126 LB | (562) 612-4266