[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 155 (Friday, December 15, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2210-E2211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   TRIBUTE TO THE LATE GEORGE C. PAGE

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 15, 2000

  Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, the City of Los Angeles recently lost a 
generous philanthropist, Mr. George C. Page. Mr. Page was the founder 
of the George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries and was a generous 
donor to Children's Hospital and Pepperdine University. I would like to 
take this opportunity to honor the contributions Mr. Page made to our 
community, and note in particular how influential his museum has been 
on the education of children of Los Angeles. I'd also like to submit 
for the record a copy of an article the Los Angeles Times ran on 
November 30, shortly after Mr. Page's death.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2000]

    Obituary: George C. Page; Philanthropist Founded La Brea Museum

                           (By Myrna Oliver)

       George C. Page, who hitchhiked to Los Angeles as a teenager 
     with $2.30 in his pocket, made a fortune with his Mission Pak 
     holiday fruit gift boxes and land development and then 
     donated millions to house treasures of the La Brea Tar Pits, 
     which fascinated him, has died. He was 99. The founder of the 
     George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Hancock Park, 
     he was also a major benefactor of Children's Hospital, 
     Pepperdine University and other institutions that aid young 
     people. He died Tuesday night in

[[Page E2211]]

     Carpinteria, Pepperdine spokesman Jerry Derloshon said 
     Wednesday. An eighth-grade dropout whose two children died as 
     infants, Page, along with his late wife, Julliete, vowed to 
     use what he earned to help children, first to survive and 
     then to get an education.
       He gave his money and name to the $9-million George C. Page 
     Building at Childrens Hospital; the George C. Page Youth 
     Center in Hawthorne; the George C. Page Stadium at Loyola 
     Marymount University; numerous buildings at Pepperdine, 
     including two residence halls and a conference room; and 
     programs at the USC School of Fine Arts, as well as the $4-
     million La Brea museum.
       But it was the museum, which opened April 15, 1977, that 
     captured Page's passion and became his permanent monument. 
     ``This is so living, so immediate,'' he told The Times in 
     1981, stretching his arms wide to indicate the distinctive 
     burial-mound structure. ``It's like giving flowers that I can 
     smell while I'm still here.'' The saga of George C. Page, how 
     he wound up in Los Angeles and how he made the money to put 
     his name on those donations, all started with an orange. The 
     piece of fruit was given to him by his teacher when he was a 
     12-year-old schoolboy in his native Fremont, Neb. ``I was so 
     awed by the beauty of that piece of fruit that I said, `I 
     hope someday I can live where that came from,' '' he 
     recalled.
       So at 16, he headed west. He lived in a $3-a-month attic 
     room in downtown Los Angeles, ate Hershey bars and 10-cent 
     bowls of bean soup fortified with crackers and ketchup. He 
     paid for all that--and saved $1,000 in his first year--
     working days as a busboy (which he first thought meant 
     driving a bus) and nights as a soda jerk. Come Christmas, the 
     youth decided to send some of California's beautiful fruit to 
     his mother and brothers in Nebraska. Innately adept at 
     packaging, he lined the box with red paper and decorated it 
     with tinsel. Thirty-seven other roomers in his boardinghouse 
     offered to pay him if he would fashion similar packages to 
     send to their Midwestern relatives. He was in business. Page 
     launched Mission Pak in 1917, pioneering the now-ubiquitous 
     marketing of California fruit in holiday gift packages in an 
     era when fresh fruit was rarely seen during the frozen 
     winters back East.
       Working alone, he bought the fruit, wrote the advertising 
     copy and found new ways to ``appeal to the eye to open the 
     purse.'' One marketing tool was the jingle that became a part 
     of Southern California history: ``A gift so bright, so gay, 
     so light. Give the Mission Pak magic way.''
       On an occasional day off, Page played tourist--going to 
     ostrich races in Pasadena or marveling over the oozing pools 
     of asphalt known around the world as La Brea Tar Pits. Why, 
     he mused, must a person travel seven miles to see the bones 
     removed from those pits, poorly displayed as they were, at 
     the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History in 
     Exposition Park? It was more than half a century before Page 
     could realize his vision of properly showcasing the 40,000-
     year-old fossils. In that time, he learned a great deal about 
     packaging,
       Visiting France when he was 21, Page encountered newly 
     invented cellophane and began importing it to enhance his 
     gift boxes. During World War II, he became an expert in 
     dehydration, distributing dried fruit and other foods to the 
     armed forces and then to the public. He started a company to 
     make spiffy auto bodies, salvaging battered but functional 
     cars.
       After he sold Mission Pak in 1946, Page delved into 
     developing, building industrial and commercial parks and 
     leasing space to the defense and aerospace industries and the 
     federal government. Packaging was even important in real 
     estate, he decided, in the form of fine landscaping to 
     enhance complexes. By the time he was ready to create his 
     museum, Page was already retirement age--so old that some 
     county officials feared he wouldn't finish what he started. 
     But even in his later years, Page walked miles each day, 
     saying a person should take care of his body as one does a 
     fine watch. He bought a motor home and made it his Hancock 
     Park field office, arriving at 7 a.m. daily for three years 
     to supervise the construction of the museum. He studied 
     architectural firms and hired two young men, Willis E. Fagan 
     and Franklin W. Thornton, who proposed a ``burial mound,'' 
     half underground, that would conserve energy and preserve the 
     park's green space. He hired an expert from Brigham Young 
     University and others who had worked on Disneyland 
     attractions to develop steel-rod and wire methods of 
     presenting the prized fossils so that they would not be just 
     ``bones, bones, bones.'' And with a promise of free plane 
     fare, rent and a television set, he lured a Pennsylvania 
     couple to Los Angeles to paint murals of La Brea as it had 
     appeared when the skeletons belonged to live animals roaming 
     the area.
       He examined the most comfortable materials--carpet to walk 
     on, not marble--and limited the museum to something that 
     could be easily covered in about an hour. When solving a 
     problem required money, Page gave that as well as his 
     expertise. When his $3-million building threatened to remain 
     empty because of county officials' penury, he donated $1 
     million more for the exhibits. He even rescued one discarded 
     skeleton of a dire wolf from the trash at the Museum of 
     Natural History. And he paid for the expensive wrought-iron 
     fence constructed a few years after the museum opened to 
     prevent night-time motorbike riders from scaling the sodded 
     sides of the building, preserving the slopes for children 
     (not to mention adults) to roll down during the day.
       Page remained a hands-on patron years after his museum 
     dream was realized. He knew where a photographer could get 
     the best angle for a shot of a giant sloth and could tell at 
     a glance if a plant in the atrium was sickly. And avid 
     benefit-goer himself, Page opened his museum to charities for 
     fund-raisers and found that the well-heeled loved dancing 
     around the imperial mammoth and the 9,000-year-old woman and 
     among the dire wolves, saber-toothed cats and condors.
       Although experts initially questioned the self-described 
     museum buff's credentials for creating the facility, they 
     eventually had to admit that Page knew--or at least was 
     willing to learn--what he was doing. Along with the 5 million 
     visitors to the museum in its first 10 years were scores of 
     museum directors from around the world, eager to inspect what 
     the amateur had wrought. ``The thing that made me feel 
     awfully good,'' the dapper, slightly built Page told The 
     Times in 1982, ``[was that] they said, `George Page, we have 
     never been in a museum with things displayed so well.' '' The 
     philanthropist is survived by a son, John Haan of 
     Carpinteria, and two grandsons.

     

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