Sydney Weisman is known to the L.A. business community as a publicist, but her family knows her as an avid singer who performs at the Farmer’s Market Thursday Night Jazz events and the like.
So as her 70th birthday Feb. 12 approached, her family conspired to surprise her with something musical. She had no idea what it could be. Her husband, David Hamlin, who’s also her business partner at WHPR in Los Angeles, only told her to dress up and be ready to leave early on her birthday, a Sunday.
At 2 p.m., a limo pulled up to their home. She was surprised to find her brother and sister-in-law from Chicago inside. They told her she was going to the Grammy Awards.
But in another surprise, the tickets weren’t just for the awards show, said Weisman, “but for the after-party, too. And entree to the red carpet” – in other words, they got primo tickets.
Her brother is Tony Weisman, who is president of the Digitas Boston-Chicago-Detroit region. Even though he has some pull, “he clawed his way to get those tickets,” Sydney Weisman said.
“As a singer, this award show really resonated with me,” she said. “I’m still giggling from it.”
Desert Wind
Peter Belisle learned just how fickle a friend the wind can be.
The real estate executive with Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. earlier this month completed a 100-mile bicycle race as part of the Tour de Palm Springs, which raises money for non-profits in Coachella Valley.
Belisle, an avid cyclist who sometimes bikes most of his commute from his Bel-Air home to his office in downtown Los Angeles, raced with his team from Velo Club La Grange in Santa Monica, one of the oldest bicycling clubs in California.
Belisle, 45, and his team completed the race in five and a half hours. He said the time – good, but not great – was the result of the challenges and benefits of the wind.
Gusts estimated at 20 miles an hour came right toward them as they began the race.
“(We) saw some riders literally blow over and crash,” he said.
But then the winds started helping.
“As the course changed direction, they became a tailwind, allowing us to hit speeds over 44 miles per hour.”
Rhymes With Dribble?
Many people remember Tommy Hawkins as a member of the first Los Angeles Lakers team that came from Minneapolis in 1960. Others place him as an L.A. radio and TV host.
But even as he’s changed careers, Hawkins has kept a steady hobby. The 6-foot-5 Hawkins, now 75, is a lifelong poet: He recently self-published a coffee book collection of 45 of his poems.
Hawkins said his penchant for poetry dates to the 1950s, when he took a required English class on poetry at Notre Dame University.
“We were all prepared to be bored to death,” he said. But he was soon hooked by an inspiring professor.
Still, after college, not everyone thought the Lakers forward was destined for narrative notoriety.
Hawkins remembers being razzed by Jerry West, who was surprised to find a basketball player writing stanzas in the back of a team plane in the early 1960s.
But now that he’s been published, Hawkins thinks he’s had the last laugh: “I sent Jerry a copy of the book, to say he was in on the ground floor.”
Staff reporters Jacquelyn Ryan and Jonathan Polakoff contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
