The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 73

Who Will Keep This ar Orphan? Cos Angeles (Times PART IV THURSDAY. MAY 8, 1975 JACK SMITH Up, Up and Away I jf jr V- I i fr A EAST MEETS WEST Dr. Richard Scott, who treated Toup Ven at edge of Los Angeles International Airport runway, wants to adopt Cambodian refugee. Times photos by Marianna Diamos Although I dislike ceremonies, except possibly a brief wedding now and then. I went out to Busch Gardens the other morning for the dedication of the new Old St.

Louis section, having been promised'a free ride in a hot-air balloon. The Old St. Louis section was built to recall the St. Louis of 1904. year of the great World's Fair, also known as the Louisana Purchase Exposition.

The main historic achievements of that storied event were the introduction of the ice cream cone and the hot dog, and the world's first controlled hot-air balloon ascent. In the interests of authenticity, ice cream cones were going for a nickel and hot dogs for a dime the prices prevailing at the fair in 1904 but as I don't eat ice cream and rarely take a hot dog before noon, I elected to do my bit by going up in the Budweiser Balloon. It turned out to be an uncertain day for balloons, however, as the wind would die down deceptively for a time, then suddenly come up again. It is not wise to go up in a balloon in a wind, I was told, unless you wish to take off across country in the direction of the wind, which I didn't wish to do. Capt.

Sid Cutter and his crew were testing flight conditions when I arrived. The captain and his co-pilot were standing in the basket under the balloon, which was inflated but held down by a ground crew clinging doggedly to three ropes. This was taking place on the grass between the lake and a row of large trees. Now and then the captain would take the balloon up, while the groundsmen hung on, but then a gust of wind would push the balloon toward the trees or out over the lake, and they would bring it down again. Finally the wind seemed to fall for good.

I climbed into the basket as the co-pilot hopped out, to keep the weight steady. The captain turned on the propane burners, there was a roar like a blast furnace, and up we went. Below us the groundsmen held on. The gardens widened below us. The basket bobbed like a boat in choppy waters.

We cleared the treetops and the San Fernando Valley was revealed. We could have stayed up there all day, I suppose, but one quickly tires of looking at the San Fernando Valley from a bobbing balloon. Suddenly there was some commotion on the ground which was interpreted as a signal that the mayor had arrived and the festivities were about to begin. As I say, I am not given to ceremonies, but I was happy enough to descend for this one. We landed.

I disembarked and walked over to St. Louis. A barbershop quartet was singing at the entrance "Let's meander and we'll take a gander In the little central park a seven-piece jazz band was playing "Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie." Men and boys and a lady in pantaloons were wheeling about on antique bicycles. Half a dozen of the types called "dignitaries" sat on a platform facing an audience seated on folding chairs in the sun.

A Marine Corps color guard marched in, followed by a Navy band in whites playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever." Mayor Bradley arrived just late enough to upstage Mayor John Poelker of St. Louis, who was already in his seat; but the weather was nice, except for ballooning, the designated deputies of councilman and supervisor presented the customary resolutions, replete with whereases and now therefores. and both the mayors made amiable remarks with an abandoned use of the word "great" in reference to the great cities of St. Louis and Los Angeles, the great states of Missouri and California, and the great Anheuser-Busch Co. It occurred to me that if Capt.

Cutter had run out of propane he might have ascended a hundred feet on these exhalations alone. A man named Dar Robinson was to have jumped from the balloon to the roof of the Strand Theater, but because of the wind he demurred. Instead, a circus scaffold was hastily erected above the theater and he jumped from it instead, landing neatly supine on an air cushion. When it was all over the jazz band marched out playing "When the Saints Come Marching In." Somewhere a calliope was piping out "The Entrance of the Gladiators." An antique military band organ with 13 wooden trumpets, a bass drum, a snare drum and cymbals was playing the "Maine Stein Song" and inside the ice cream parlor a solid oak authentic nickelodeon was plunking out something I couldn't place but would bet the copyright had run out on. As I left Old St.

Louis the barbershop quartet was still at work. "You might have been the life of the party," they sang, "but that was 35 years ago Alas. I sighed, one final stroke of authenticity. Religion Issue Snarls Adoption of Cambodian BY BETTY LIDDICK Times Stall Writer The first time Dr. Richard Scott saw the boy, he was lying on a stretcher at the edge of the runway at Los Angeles International Airport.

That is, the boy was lying there not Scott though given the confusion of the day, no one would have faulted the doctor for taking to a stretcher himself. As director of disaster operations for the county Department of Health Services, Scott was in charge of the medical team examining 330 Vietnamese and Cambodian refugee children arriving from the Philippines during Operation Babylift. They did not have an easy flight. One child died aboard the World Airways 747 and many were sick. Their arrival this cool, cloudy Saturday morning, April 12, wasn't any smoother.

When the red and white jumbo jet landed, a crowd, including Mayor and Mrs. Bradley, Supervisor James Hayes, reporters, photographers, doctors, nurses and paramedics, met the children. In the resulting tumult, Toup Ven, the 14-month-old Cambodian on the stretcher, somehow cut his forehead. Maybe he bumped it on a door. At any rate, the wound was not critical, but deep enough to bleed spectacularly, much as you do when the paring knife slips.

Scott sent the boy to the hospital for some stitches. He remembers now thinking how cute the boy was, "as flaky as anybody would be after a 16-hour flight" but still cute. Nothing more. Scott saw the boy twice daily for five days after that at County-USC Medical Center, where he is Ministries, the agency that has custody of Toup Ven, a 14-month-old Cambodian orphan. "active members in good standing of an evangelical Protestant church." The Scotts are Episcopalians.

And Toup Ven? He could be Buddhist or French Catholic or atheist for that matter. His situation is unique in California adoptions, said Mary Sullivan, chief of adoption services of the state Department of Health. Please Turn to Page 1 1 Col. I WAITING Linda and Richard Scott, with Jock and Gillian in their backyard, are suing Family on staff. Though he sardonically resists explanations about "the power of love," Scott wept publicly the day the boy left A week later he and his wife, Linda, filed suit in Superior Court so that they might adopt Toup Ven.

The Scotts are asking for a temporary restraining order against Family Ministries, the Whittier adoption agency that has custody of the boy. They want to prevent Family Ministries from enforcing its requirement that adoptive parents be THE VIEWS INSIDE jrw.viiiiiniiE-i8 rawUiii'ilfTliiiii iinniMml Channel 68's Antenna Out for Public Support BY DICK ADLER Times Stall Writer The Los Angeles environs are now served by four separate but unequal public television stations: grand old KCET, the dowager empress of culture on Channel 28; Orange County's academically oriented KOCE, Channel 50, viewable on the southern fringes of the city; the school board's largely experimental KLCS, Channel 58; and the newest addition to the local PBS family, KVST, which has been stumbling along on Channel 68 for about a year now without making much of a splash. Faced with this profusion, I had almost begun to believe what some folks at KCET have been saying about the other public stations, especially Channel 68 that they are well-meaning but counterproductive ripoff artists whose main function is to split the already-fragmented financial support available for public television. It was in this frame of mind that I called upon Jerry Shaw, KVST's chief troubleshooter since January when Clayton Stouffer, the man who labored for four years to get the station on the air, was ousted after what were reported to have been a painful series of clashes with Channel 68's board of directors. In what was apparently a last-ditch effort to recruit subscribers, Shaw and his associates wanted to call attention to some new programs that KVST is airing this month.

A large ad in last Sunday's TV Times seemed to sum up the problem with surgical precision. "The Kind of Television You've Never Seen on Television" shouted a large headline, while at the bottom of the page a tiny line whispered "See The Ascent of Man Thursday at 5 p.m." You don't have to be a Bronowski buff to know that The Ascent of Man ran three times each week for 13 weeks on KCET until last month. Whose leg was being pulled here? Only a kitchen cynic's, as it turns out. "In order to get half the cost of that ad paid for by PBS, we had to mention one of their current programs," explains Shaw who as a former head of the Pacifica Foundation learned long ago to walk the tightrope between art and commerce. "It's part of our special paradox here: for us to exist as a separate, self-supporting entity, we must put on new and distinctive shows of our own.

But these cost more money, so Please Turn to Page 26, Col. 2 BOOKS: Georgina Battiscombe's "Shaftesbury: The Great Reformer" by Robert Kirsch on Page 14. MUSIC: Festival of American Music at Cal State Domin- guez Hills by Daniel Cariaga on Page 23. Soprano Margaret Zeleny and pianist Paul Pitman at All Saints Episcopal Church of Beverly Hills by Robert Riley on Page 19. The San Fernando Valley Symphony at Pierce College by Lewis Segal on Page 22.

Electronic pieces at Brand Library by William Weber on Page 23. Ubiquity at Donte's by Leonard Feather on Page 22. STAGE: "Two Farces" at Theater East by Dan Sullivan on Page 19. The Nomads' Theater's "The Good Doctor" at University of Judaism's Gindi Auditorium by Sylvie Drake on Page 24. FOR THE FUN OF IT-Author Richard Armour says humor requires an alertness of mind.

Times photo by Kathleen Ballard IT'S WRITE ON An Armoury of Humor BY MICHAEL SEILER Times Stall Writer Richard Armour a man who would not seem inclined to worry much is just a shade concerned about this matter of advancing age. "I'm hesitant to come right out and tell you my age at my next birthday," he told an inquisitor the other day. "I'm holding on to my present one as long as I can. So, right now, I'm 68 and three-quarters years old." It's not vanity, insists Armour, who was honored recently at the Los Angeles Library seventh annual tribute luncheon. Rather, it's the sure and certain knowledge that if Armour, humorist and author of 51 books.

Please Turn to Page Hi. Col. I PATRON OF COMPOSERS Paul Fromm says "bridging" gaps is foundation's principal work. Times photo by Larry Bessel PAUL FROMM One-Man Music Foundation BY DANIEL CARIAGA Times Stall Writer "Orchestral concerts in 1975 are exactly what they were 50 and 60 years ago. They still perpetuate the social customs of the 19th century.

Even the programs are the same: a curtain raiser, a flashy concerto played by a flashy soloist and a big Romantic piece. Nothing has changed. Nothing." Paul Fromm is talking about one of the principal themes in his career as a patron of composers in the second half of this century the acceptance of living music by living writers into the mainstream of contemporary American life. Obviously, it is a theme still in the process of resolution. Please Turn to Page 24, Col.

1 AND OTHER FEATURES Dear Abby Page 5 Joyce Haber Page 20 Beauty Page 18 On Fashion Page 10 Bridge Page 11 On View Page 2 Art Buchwald Page 3 Cecil Smith Page 25 Comics Page 27 Stage Notes Page 21 Family Guide Page 6 Peter Weaver Page 8 Television Pages 25, 26, 28.