After a wildfire decimated a California high school’s newsroom, destroying its cameras, computers and archived newspapers spanning six decades, one of the first offers of help that its journalism adviser received came from the other side of the country.
Claire Smith, founding executive director of Temple University’s sports media center, had known Lisa Nehus Saxon since they helped carve out a place for women journalists in Major League Baseball more than 40 years ago. They’d supported each other through the days of being barred from locker rooms, and now with much of Palisades Charter High School damaged, Smith wanted to be there for her friend again.
“I just thought, ‘What can we do? How can we help with healing?’” Smith said.
Earlier this week, she traveled from Philadelphia to deliver the result of that offer: a university paper featuring the high school students’ articles.
Across nearly a dozen pages, the insert showcased articles on price gouging in the rental market after the wildfire and the school returning to in-person lessons, along with poignant firsthand accounts of losing everything to the fire. There were also poems and hand-drawn pictures by students from Pasadena Rosebud Academy, a transitional kindergarten through eighth-grade school in Altadena, California, that was destroyed in the fire.
Wildfires in January ravaged the Los Angeles area, wiping out nearly 17,000 structures including homes, schools, businesses and places of worship.
The Palisades high school, made up of about 3,000 students in Los Angeles, saw about 40% of its campus damaged and had to move temporarily into an old Sears building. Nehus Saxon estimated that around a quarter of its newspaper staff members lost their homes, with some forced to move out of the community and switch schools.
This project, she and Smith said, was a way to give students a project to focus on after the tragedy while also providing them a place to tell a larger audience the experience of their community.
Smith said she thought the project would be healing for the students “but also give them something that they could hold in their hands and, when they grow up, show their children and grandchildren.”
Inside a basement classroom in Santa Monica on Wednesday, Smith and Samuel O’Neal, The Temple News’ editor-in-chief, handed out the papers to the high school staff.
It was the first time they had seen their Tideline articles in print, as the paper had moved online years ago due to the cost.
Kate Swain, 18, a co-editor-in-chief for the paper, said it felt surreal to finally flip through the printed pages.
“Because of everything that we’ve gone through together, everything that we’ve had to persevere through and everyone’s had all these personal things that they’ve been dealing with,” she said. “And yet simultaneously, we’ve been pouring all this time and energy and all of our passion for journalism into writing these articles.”
Gigi Appelbaum, 18, a co-editor-in-chief of the paper who lost her home in the fire, said the project felt especially distinct because it involved people thousands of miles away.
“The fact that people from across the country are aware of what’s going on with us and emphasize with our situation and want to get our voices out there, it’s really special,” said Appelbaum, who has been on the paper for four years.
One of the things she lost in the fire was a box filled with important cards and messages. She said she plans to store her copy in a new box as she works to restart the collection.
Smith and Nehus Saxon met in 1983 during a game between the Angels and Yankees in Anaheim, California. Nehus Saxon said she walked over to Smith to introduce herself and found her hustling to meet a deadline.
“Who knew that little introduction would blossom into this,” said Nehus Saxon.
In the years since, they’ve traveled to London together for Major League Baseball’s first games in Europe, and they cried together in 2017 as Smith became the first woman to win the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s Career Excellence Award.
“We don’t talk every week,” Nehus Saxon said. “Sometimes we can go, you know, months and months without talking. But all we have to do is send each other a text message and we know the other will be there immediately.”
That bond was made all the more clear when Nehus Saxon heard from Smith as fire engulfed her community. Her home was only three blocks from the school. While it survived the blaze, it’s filled with led laden ash and may not be safe to live in for years.
But with the help of Smith, she and her students have been able to move forward and produce the final edition of the school year. After the papers were handed out, Nehus Saxon kept one for the school’s archive.
“When you’ve lost everything you’ve got to start somewhere,” Smith said.
