Feb. 4, 1958

Mrs. Shannon is not against progress. Her argument is not with the
achievement itself. It’s with the method employed to reach it.

She phoned me last night with her story.

"I live at 16200 Gilmore St. in west Van Nuys," she said. "Do you know where that is?"

I said I did, generally.

"It’s exactly three houses from the proposed San Fernando Valley
Airport runway extension," she clarified. "We bought our home in a new
tract here in 1950, back when only three or four planes a week took off
from the airport. Commercial planes–not jets."

"And now?" I asked.

"Now," she said, "there are planes taking off at all hours of the day
and night.  Thundering jets. Our house is directly in the path of the
takeoff strip, and I’m living in fear of the day when one of the planes
comes crashing into our neighborhood.

"In the last four years, planes have crashed into houses around the
airport twice," she continued. "Once a woman was killed and a bunch of
children just escaped with their lives.

"The other time, nobody was home, fortunately. There was a fuel tank that fell from still another plane not too long ago, too."

Mrs. Shannon mentioned that she had a 7-year-old daughter.

"When she was a few years younger she used to run screaming into the
house every time a jet would come over. A lot of them are only 75 to
100 feet up."

I asked Mrs. Shannon if she’s ever considered selling her house, and this obviously was the question she’s been waiting for.

"Considered? We’ve been trying for a year now. A few years ago houses
were going for around $16,000-$18,000 here in the neighborhood.

"We put ours up for $16,000. Finally we cut it down to $14,000. People
will pull up in front to look at the house and if a plane’s going by,
they’ll duck at the noise and then won’t even bother to come in.
They’ll just drive off.

"A real estate man told us the other day we’d be lucky to get $11,000-$12,000 for it."

I asked about the neighbors–what they were doing.

"Some of them sold out a few years ago when the jet traffic started
getting heavy," she said. "But now some of those are being sued because
they supposedly didn’t tell the new owners about the increased noise
and danger.

"Then last June, just about every family in the neighborhood–some 150
or 160–signed a petition asking the city to buy us out if the airport
bond issue passed and the runway was extended.

"A few politicians promised us that the city would buy our homes–but they were just promises. Nothing else."

Mrs. Shannon added that some of her neighbors had made sound recordings
and taken movie footage of the lanes roaring over their housetops.

"What really burns us up," she said, "is that the city permitted this
tract to be built in the first place. They’ve known for years–long
before 1950–that this was going to become a major airport.

"What sense does it make to let some contractor build a bunch of nice
homes which will become unbearable to live in after a few years?"

I admitted it didn’t make much.

"On weekends," Mrs. Shannon continued, "it’s so bad that we have to get
up early and get out. Why can’t they build their big military airports
where they won’t be threatening everybody’s sanity, and lives of
hundreds of children?"

I asked her if she’d ever complained to the airport directly.

"I did," she sighed. "Lots of times. But it’s always the same answer.
They say, ‘This is your national defense. You should be happy.’ "

"Now how can you answer a question like that?" she asked.

"I don’t know," I said.

We were back where we started and there was no place else to go. So we hung up.