| The 2007 Awards Dinner was held on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 |
|
Four local couples joined the elite group of individuals who have been honored by the Pasadena Museum of History as "Contemporary History Makers" since the award was inaugurated in 2000. A Contemporary History Maker is defined as an individual whose civic passion, innovative design, or charitable interests continue to shape Pasadena's unique and rich heritage.
Signature sponsor for the 2007 Contemporary History Maker Awards Dinner is Shuster Financial Group, LLC.
The Museum is also grateful to Twin Palms and Ambiance Lighting/Foster Denker for their support of this event.
The 2007 Honorees:
ANN HASSETT & BOB NIEMACK
 Ann Hassett and Bob Niemack have worked together for the last quarter century, producing television programs for HBO, CBS, ABC, NBC, and The Discovery Channels. They have been honored with 11 Emmy Awards, two Cable ACE Awards, and a Peabody Award. Their programs have explored topics; from “The History of Garbage” to “The Lives of Gang Girls;” from “Hookers” to the “Survival of Consciousness after Death”. They recently produced “The Once and Future Griffith Observatory” for the Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon theater at the Griffith Observatory. Ann is also the Executive Producer of the Griffith’s fulldome planetarium event “Centered in the Universe,” which was premiered in October 2006.
Bob was born in Pasadena, graduated from Pasadena High School and Occidental College. Ann adopted Pasadena as her new hometown when she and Bob moved back here in 1991. Since then, Ann has contributed to the fund-raising efforts of the Pasadena Symphony, Pasadena Playhouse, Pasadena’s schools, and many Pasadena Arts organizations. She has also served as Executive Director of the Levitt Pavilion, Managing Director of Ambassador Hall, and is currently consultant to the Griffith Observatory. Bob is Executive Producer for several television series and specials, including “Married by the In-Laws” which features a recent wedding held on the beautiful grounds of the Pasadena Museum of History, to be aired later this summer on the WE network.
HARVEY & ELLEN KNELL
 Harvey and Ellen Knell are perhaps best known to a Pasadena audience for the wonderful preservation work they’ve done on their beautiful and historic home, a Greene and Greene masterpiece, known as the Blacker House. They have made substantial efforts over the past thirteen years to reunite the house with its unique furnishings (after a previous owner stripped many one-of-a-kind elements of the house, including doors, windows, and light fixtures, and sold them off piecemeal). They have restored the luster to the Blacker House, an architecturally significant and historical gem in this, the Crown of the Valley.
Harvey was born in Youngstown, Ohio, and raised in Southern California. He graduated with an MBA from Columbia in 1969, and has enjoyed a successful career as president of a number of home improvement chains, as a founder of Trico Capital Management, and as the founding chairman and CEO of Stør Furnishings International, Inc. Harvey serves as a board member for a number of organizations, including the Armory Center for the Arts and Pasadena POPS.
Ellen holds a doctorate from UCLA in human genetics, and has performed genetic research in the areas of senility, psychiatric behavior, and was a pioneer in the field of genetic counseling, working with the families of Down Syndrome children. Like her husband, Ellen is active in many civic and charitable organizations, including serving as president of the Grammy Award-winning Southwest Chamber Orchestra and on the board of Mother’s Club. Ellen and Harvey have raised three boys.
PHIL & SALLY SWAN
 Phil and Sally Swan have played an active and important role in the cultural life of Pasadena for many years. Their community-minded efforts have done a great deal to enrich our community.
Phil and Sally were married in 1953, having met in college, with Phil at Pomona and Sally at Scripps. Phil had been born in Pasadena, and after he was discharged from the Army in 1955 the couple settled in South Pasadena. That same year Phil began his career as an investment counselor, a profession he maintained until his retirement in 1999. Since then Phil has maintained a private trustee practice, and continues to serve on a number of local boards, including the Pasadena Community Foundation, Ann Peppers Foundation, and as an Overseer of the Huntington Library. Phil is an avid autograph collector and an aficionado of World War I history.
Sally was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Since moving to South Pasadena with Phil, Sally has been an active community volunteer and was one of a group of four friends that was instrumental in establishing the Friends Book Store at the South Pasadena Public Library. She is an avid gardener, watercolor artist, and book collector. She and Phil travel the world as well.
IAN & REGINA WHITCOMB
 Ian and Regina Whitcomb have been delighting lovers of music and dance in Pasadena and beyond for decades. Ian was born in England in 1941, and developed a love for music at a young age. His love of music has endured; while attending Trinity College, Dublin, in the early 1960s, Ian developed a love of American pop music. In 1965 his song “You Turn Me On” shot to the American Top Ten. But Ian’s true musical love was old time music, like ragtime and Tin Pan Alley, and it was for resurrecting those nearly forgotten styles of music that he is best known today.
Ian is a Grammy Award-winning recording artist, enjoying great success as a performer specializing in popular music of the early twentieth century. The Grammy was earned in 1997 for the CD Ian made with his White Star Orchestra, called Titanic: Music as Heard on the Fateful Voyage. He has been a prolific artist, recording more than thirty albums and continuing to appear in concerts throughout North America and Europe. He is also a music historian, the author of more than a dozen books, and a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of American Music.
Regina frequently performs as a singer with Ian and teaches period dance and etiquette. They live in Altadena. Together Ian and Regina have a rare ability to transport an audience back in time.
|
