Horizon Air cockpit scare revives pilot mental health concerns

• October 26, 2023

An off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot’s alleged midair sabotage attempt of a Horizon Air flight from Seattle to San Francisco on Sunday — and the pilot’s later admission that he had been depressed — highlights the major concerns that pilot mental health poses to the airline industry.

It was an issue that came to international attention when a Germanwings copilot in 2015 locked the captain out of the cockpit midflight and deliberately dove their Airbus into the French Alps, killing all 150 aboard. At that time, the FAA reviewed and revised its mental health policies for flight crews. But experts say that seeking treatment can cost pilots their wings.

“If you’re crazy enough to admit you have a mental problem, that’s basically the end of your career at an airline,” said Ross “Rusty” Aimer, a retired airline pilot and CEO of Aero Consulting Experts. “We as pilots hide anything that has to do with mental illness. It’s sad. We need to at the airlines do a better job of addressing mental health and not make it a taboo subject.”

The pilot involved in Sunday’s incident, Joseph David Emerson, 44, of Pleasant Hill, remained in custody Wednesday in Portland, Oregon, where the flight he was taking was diverted after he allegedly attempted to shut down the jet’s engines. He had been riding as a guest in a cockpit jump-seat when he suddenly threw off his headset, announced “he was not OK,” and grabbed shut-off handles before being wrestled away by the pilots. Authorities said Emerson reported having suicidal thoughts while in custody and was being closely monitored.

State authorities have charged Emerson with 83 counts each of attempted murder and reckless endangerment of others — one for each of the other people on the plane, including 11 children under age 14 — as well as endangering an aircraft. His next court hearing on those charges is Nov. 1. Federal authorities have charged Emerson with interference with a flight crew, for which he is scheduled for arraignment Thursday.

Affidavits filed in support of the state and federal charges said Emerson told police that he’d struggled with depression for as long as six years and had just lost his best friend. He told investigators that he’d taken “magic mushrooms” 48 hours earlier, was dehydrated, hadn’t slept in more than 40 hours and was in mental crisis. He told police that he seized the controls “because I thought I was dreaming, and I just wanna wake up.”

Mental health crises linked to deadly air crashes are rare. But given the nature of the airline industry, the potential for disaster is high if anything’s mentally amiss with the folks in the cockpit — their hands on the yoke sticks at 30,000 feet in the sky.

The Federal Aviation Administration did not respond to questions about pilot mental health screening Wednesday. But its website says FAA regulations require airline pilots to undergo a medical exam every six months to five years, depending on the type of flying they do and their age. Aviation Medical Examiners are trained to determine the pilot’s mental health and fitness to fly.

The regulations require pilots to report any medical visits during the previous three years, all medications they are taking and other medical history, and pilots must disclose all existing physical and psychological conditions and medications. The examiner may ask further questions and can request additional psychological testing.

But the FAA also says it is “reducing the stigma of mental health to help pilots receive care.” The FAA said it “encourages pilots to seek help if they have a mental health condition since most, if treated, do not disqualify a pilot from flying.”

The regulations specify that certain medical conditions such as a psychosis, bipolar disorder and some types of personality disorder automatically disqualify a pilot from obtaining an FAA medical certificate. The FAA’s posted mental health policy doesn’t say how it handles depression in pilots, and the linked regulations don’t mention it.

But William R. Hoffman, a physician and FAA aeromedical examiner, wrote in a November 2022 Scientific American article that, in practice, the regulations bar pilots from the cockpit for months and sometimes years for mild anxiety or depression. He argued in the article that “We must rethink the system that drives pilots from attending to their mental health and change what seeking mental health care services means in aviation.”

The Air Line Pilots Association International, which represents pilots at many large carriers including Alaska Airlines, said in a statement that “it is important to remember that the airline pilot profession in North America is one of the most highly vetted and scrutinized careers, and for good reason.”

“U.S. pilots are continuously evaluated throughout their careers through training, medical exams, crew resource management, and programs such as the Line Operations Safety Audit, as well as by the airline and during random flight checks by the Federal Aviation Administration.”

Susan J. Lewis, a licensed psychologist and lawyer in Denver who has worked with several pilots, said the FAA rules allow for a more nuanced approach to treating depression and that it’s not necessarily a career-ender for them.

“It’s on a case-by-case basis. It would depend on if the clinician believed the pilot could fly safely,” Lewis said. “The FAA is trying to be sensitive to mental health and the stress pilots go through. But with any governmental organization, the wheels turn slowly. I always think more things can be done in terms of mental health.”

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Lewis said she wasn’t a fan of one change implemented since the Germanwings crash: The FAA’s encouragement of pilot peer support programs organized by airlines and unions.

“Pilots are pilots, not mental health practitioners,” Lewis said. “There’s a difference between needing support and needing mental health care.”

But Lewis said the FAA has eased its policy toward antidepressants, allowing their use in some cases. And Aimer noted that the FAA recently changed the way it views transgender pilots, so it’s no longer treated as a disorder requiring additional medical scrutiny.

Aimer said the FAA has done better at dealing with substance abuse among pilots, but that mental health remains a challenge. There have been several pilot suicides following stressful airline mergers, but “it’s a taboo subject, and everybody wants it to go away.”

“I wish I knew all the answers — I don’t, I’m not a psychiatrist,” Aimer said. “We need some really serious minds and professionals to address this properly.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Richmond, Calif., becomes first U.S. city to declare support for Palestinians amid Israel-Hamas war

• October 26, 2023

RICHMOND, Calif. — When officials in this city of only 115,000 people announced they would be voting on a resolution to support Palestinians living in Gaza amid the worst outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas in decades, it drew hundreds of people to Tuesday’s city council meeting.

The Richmond City Council cleared its entire Tuesday night schedule to discuss the controversial stance, which protests what the resolution characterizes as an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment and war crimes by the state of Israel. A vote approving the lengthy resolution wasn’t tallied until just after 1 a.m. Wednesday — establishing what appears to be the first of its kind in the nation.

Nearly five hours of public testimony was delivered by scores of community leaders and local residents on all sides of the conflict, which has already claimed the lives of more than 6,500 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.

Richmond’s elected officials patiently listened to the hundreds of people who packed City Hall’s chambers to capacity, overflowed to the auditorium lobby next door and tuned into one of the meeting’s livestreams. At one point, the Zoom room maxed out its limit of 500 participants and more than 300 people were following along on YouTube, while at least an additional 150 written public comments were submitted virtually.

Attendees — who were given only 60 seconds to speak — collectively represented a cacophony of anger, grief, fear, hope and solidarity that overwhelmingly pleaded for a shared future of peace and the sanctity of innocent lives. More than half of the comments supported the resolution.

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Numerous people described accounts of personal family members being caught in the crossfire in both Gaza and Israel. Others focused on death tolls of the most recent attacks, or recounted historic milestones of the decades-long conflict. Some Jewish speakers said the resolution made them fear for their safety living in Richmond.

But despite a handful of impassioned speeches that boiled over into divisive, accusatory attacks against city leaders, the meeting never devolved into utter chaos or more than a few minutes of delay.

“That is the beauty of Richmond,” said Councilmember Doria Robinson, “that we can hold that kind of space, and we can actually hear each other, even if we don’t agree. I think it is important — as we lean into justice, as we lean into being courageous — that we make sure not to forget any part of our humanity and remember that people are hurting.”

People filled the overflow space outside the the Richmond City Council chambers on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 showing up to express their opinion on the Gaza Resolution to be voted on by the city council in Richmond, Calif. Nearly five hours of public testimony was recorded from scores of community leaders and local residents representing all sides of the war that has already claimed more than 6,500 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis.(Photo by Don Gosney)

An amended version of the resolution was approved in a 5-1 vote. Councilmember Cesar Zepeda voted no after his short list of additional amendments and clarifications was rejected, and Councilmember Claudia Jimenez was absent on medical leave.

Last-minute amendments that were approved included condemnation of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and called for the release of Israeli hostages; they were added following an immense outcry from largely Jewish community organizations and other residents leading up to Tuesday’s meeting.

The final approved resolution proclaimed, in part, that Palestinians in Gaza “are currently facing a campaign of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment by the state of Israel; and whereas, collective punishment is considered a war crime under international law.”

Additionally, the final resolution criticized Palestinians’ lack of access to electricity, food, water, medical care and aid — calling for an immediate ceasefire and substantial humanitarian aid to Gaza, in addition to “an end to Israeli apartheid in the occupation and blockade of Palestinian land.”

Elected officials said that with the resolution, they aimed to amplify Palestinian narratives that they felt were being excluded from mainstream news.

While Robinson said that the last-minute changes were made possible through dialogue and understanding, she criticized the hateful rhetoric that targeted the city’s resolution, comparing it to a history of pushback against similar efforts during the civil rights, South African apartheid and the U.S. abolitionist movement.

“It was not popular, it was not comfortable, there were wars fought to stop those things, and it was divisive, but at some point, somebody has to say, ‘I love you, and what you’re doing is wrong,’” Robinson said. “I think we’re at that point in Richmond. I hope we’re at that point in Richmond.”

People filled the overflow space outside the the Richmond City Council chambers on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2023 showing up to express their opinion on the Gaza Resolution to be voted on by the city council in Richmond, Calif. Nearly five hours of public testimony was recorded from scores of community leaders and local residents representing all sides of the war that has already claimed more than 6,500 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis. (Photo by Don Gosney)

Yet, dozens of people at the meeting called for rejection or even a delay of the vote — arguing that it would only sow more division.

“It appears to me like the city councilmembers that wrote the resolution are using the tragic situation in Palestine and Israel, both of which are thousands of miles away from Richmond, to gain politically from it,” said Richmond resident Theresa Russell. “That doesn’t sit well with me.”

Others felt the resolution was antisemitic, including Beth Seidman, a 37-year Richmond resident who said it was full of “half-truths, inaccuracies and distortions.” She said it was a “resolution to create hatred toward Jews and divisiveness in our community.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Eduardo Martinez, who co-sponsored the resolution, said society has historically been slow to openly recognize issues like apartheid and war crimes. Rather than avoid controversy or divisiveness, he said he can simultaneously denounce burgeoning antisemitic rhetoric, while uplifting decades of Palestinian oppression.

“If (the resolution) sounds one-sided, it’s because it voices a narrative that has been ignored,” Martinez said, later doubling down on the notion that none of the approved language was hostile against Jewish people. “How many times when we read history have we asked, ‘Why didn’t anyone do something sooner?’ Do we say something when the bloodshed is over? This proclamation chooses human lives over politics.”

​ Orange County Register 

Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Randy Bachman describes music’s time-traveling power

• October 26, 2023

Ask Randy Bachman to explain the enduring appeal of classic rock and the singer-guitarist – and cofounder of both the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive – points to … Sting?

“I saw Sting on TV a while ago, and people were asking him about his songs,” Bachman says by phone from his home in Victoria, British Columbia. “He’s one of the great guys, been around forever, and he’ll do songs from every era that he was in.

“And he said to the guy interviewing him, ‘If I asked you what you were doing 10 years ago or 20 years ago from tonight, you’d have no idea,’” Bachman says. “If I asked you, ‘What were you doing the first time you heard “Message in a Bottle” or “Roxanne” ‘ –

– “or ‘American Woman’ or ‘These Eyes’ or ‘Takin’ Care of Business,’” he continues, pivoting from Sting to his own songs. “You would go back to the car, the truck or the tractor you were driving. Or where you were working. Or the girl you were dancing with or making out with.

“That song takes you back there,” Bachman says. “That’s a great thing about the music. It’s kind of like a journey through time.

“When I’m on stage, I feel like I’m 20 or 30 when I wrote and played these songs. You go back to that time when I’m on with (Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s) Fred Turner. When I’m on with (the Guess Who’s) Burton Cummings.

“It’s kind of a weird time-traveling thing,” he says.

Bachman-Turner Overdrive comes to Southern California for concerts at the YouTube Theatre in Inglewood on Thursday, Nov. 2, Fantasy Springs Resort Casino on Saturday, Nov. 4, and the Magnolia in El Cajon on Sunday, Nov. 5.

Classically rockin’

At 80, Bachman is the only original full-time BTO bandmember as the group marks its 50th anniversary. Original singer-bassist Fred Turner, also 80, is mostly off the road now. Surrounded on stage by younger musicians, including his son, Tal Bachman, whose 1999 single “She’s So High” hit No. 1 on the adult contemporary charts, Bachman says he’s enjoying live performance as much as ever.

“There seems to have been a turn in the whole music business which affected me and many dozens and dozens of my friends,” Bachman says. “Where classic rock has endured decades and it’s still going. It’s almost become like blues or jazz. It’s its own genre and whoever is alive can carry on that tradition.”

Bachman is blessed, of course, with a deep catalog of hits from the ’60s and ’70s with two bands. A typical set might include songs such as “American Woman,” “These Eyes,” and “No Time” from the Guess Who, and hits by Bachman-Turner Overdrive such as “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet,” “Let It Ride,” and “Hey You.”

“I was so lucky to be in the Guess Who and write a dozen of their hits, and the same with BTO,” he says. “Now I’m finding that we’re getting a lot of BTO fans saying we’ve never heard these songs on stage, and then naming like ‘Little Gandy Dancer,’ ‘Give Me Your Money Please,’ ‘Blue Collar.’

“Almost a third of our setlist is sent in by fans,” he says. “And honestly, we’ve never even played some of these songs on stage. When you’ve done an album, a couple albums, you play the hits everybody likes or the FM cuts, and you never play some of these album cuts again.”

BTO is back

The fact that Bachman is touring now under the Bachman-Turner Overdrive name has its roots in an old family feud and a handful of recent losses.

In addition to Bachman and Turner, the original lineup included Bachman’s brothers Robbie and Tim. While guitarist Tim Bachman was replaced in the ’70s, drummer Robbie Bachman stayed with the band after Randy Bachman left and eventually gained control of the name and its distinctive gear-shaped logo.

“In the last three years, I’ve lost three brothers,” Bachman says of Robbie, Tim and Gary Bachman, the latter of whom served as the band’s manager during the ’70s. “They’ve all passed away from COVID and heart and all that kind of stuff.

“So I was able to get the BTO thing and just kind of tour as it,” he says. “We tried to tour as BTO for years. We always had a fight with brother fighting brother fighting brother and all that stuff.

“Now they’re all gone. There’s no fight. Suddenly, I evolved into BTO. It took me by surprise and Fred by surprise. Suddenly, we started getting called to do gigs.”

Where past tours as a solo act or a duo with either Fred Turner or Burton Cummings played mostly club venues, Bachman-Turner Overdrive is playing medium-sized venues, and nice ones at that, Bachman says.

“It used to be a big downer if you ended up playing Vegas or you ended up playing a casino or on a cruise ship,” he says. “That was like on the way down. Now they’re some of the best gigs you can get. The casinos and the cruises, boom, all the fans go there.

“And the casinos have kind of standardized it,” Bachman says. “They all have rooms that have 3,500 to 5,000 people with a good sightline for everybody, good PA. So to go out and do a concert, it’s really fantastic.”

Traveling on

Not everything Bachman is working on today looks to his past. He and his son Tal started a YouTube series during the pandemic called “Train Wreck,” in which they’d each bring in five songs and challenge the other to play them as best they could without any preparation or advance.

Now they occasionally tour as the duo Bachman & Bachman, bringing live “Train Wreck” shows to fans.

“They call out the songs from the audience,” Bachman says of one such recent show. “They call out ‘Hey Joe.’ We think, ‘Hey Joe, where are going with that gun in your hand.’ And Tal looks at me and goes, ‘What’s next?’”

They might stumble around a bit, guessing at a lyric, a key, or a chord, Bachman says. Often father and son and the audience all end up singing the songs together.

“It’s like a bunch of drunk guys at a barbecue,” he says, laughing.

Bachman & Bachman are also finishing an album, which will serve as a soundtrack to a documentary tentatively titled “Lost and Found,” the wild story of how Randy Bachman managed to recover his beloved orange 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins guitar some 46 years after it was stolen.

During the pandemic, a stranger wrote Bachman to say he thought he’d found the guitar by using image-recognition tools to compare the instrument Bachman was playing in a clip of “Lookin’ Out for No. 1” on YouTube.

“Then he googled and found another guy playing the same Gretsch guitar, singing ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ in a nightclub in Japan like he’s Brian Setzer,” Bachman says.

The musician, who goes by the name Takeshi, bought the guitar from a Tokyo music shop in 2014, unaware of its history. He agreed to return it for a similar instrument, and Bachman lucked onto an identical Gretsch model made the same week in 1957 and only two serial numbers off his own guitar.

On July 1, 2002 – Canada Day – Bachman and Takeshi met at the Canadian consulate in Tokyo for the exchange, all of which was filmed as part of the 2024 documentary on the story.

“Suddenly, karma after 50 years,” he says. “There’s a magic in my Gretsch guitar because I learned to play on it. I wrote and played every song on it – ‘These Eyes,’ ‘Laughing,’ ‘Undun,’ ‘American Woman,’ ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ were all done on that guitar.

“And then it was gone. To get it back, it’s unbelievable.’

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​ Orange County Register 

Anaheim briefs: Community Dia de Los Muertos celebration planned

• October 26, 2023

A Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, celebration is planned Nov. 3 at Pearson Park.

From 5 to 9:30 p.m. there will be mariachis performing, crafts and altars for the community. Bring your own chair or blanket. There will also be food and vendors at the park.

The evening is presented by the Anaheim Community Services Dept in benefit of the Project S.A.Y. (Support Anaheim’s Youth).

For more information call 714-765-5191

Anaheim Reads celebrates community and reading

Each year, the Anaheim Public Library hosts Anaheim Reads, a month-long celebration of reading.

This year, the chosen book is “There, There,” a debut novel by Cheyenne and Arapaho author Tommy Orange. It is about a large cast of Native Americans and a month of activities are planned around the theme of exploring Native American culture and history.

For children, companion books to read are “Waa’ake: The Bird Who Fell in Love with the Sun”  by Cindi Alvitre and “Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story” by Kevin Noble Maillard.

There have been a number of activities and workshops held at the various library branches throughout the month, including making fry bread, book discussions, cooking lessons and basket weaving.

A Native Arts Festival will be held from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Nov. 4 at Founder’s Park on West Street.  For more information visit anaheim.net/library.

Halloween events today

The Anaheim Family YMCA is presenting a night of trick-or-treating from 6 to 8:30 p.m. tonight, Oct. 26, at its community complex, 1422 W. Broadway.

There will be music, giveaways and fun! Families must register to attend. For more information, email Jasmin Ayon at [email protected].

Also, experience Nightmare on Center Street at the weekly Downtown Anaheim Farmers Market today. Look for spooky vendors, trick or treating, and more from 11 a.m. to 3  p.m. at 435 W. Center Street Promenade.  For more information visit downtownanaheim.com

Haunted Anaheim is upon us

Listen to stories of local hauntings presented by Darcy Staniforth Anderson, a scholar in American Studies at Cal State Fullerton and a tour docent for Haunted O.C., on Oct. 29 at the Anaheim Central Library.

The 1:30 p.m. program is for all ages, but best for adults and teens. All Hallows’ Eve costumes are optional.

For more information visit Anaheim.net/Library.

Halloween festival and parade this weekend

The Anaheim Fall Festival and Halloween Parade are Oct. 28 in downtown Anaheim.

The Fall Festival will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Oct. 28 on the Center Street Promenade and will include an old-fashioned Halloween carnival, local artists, live music, magic shows, kiddie and doggie costume contests, float decorating, kids crafts and much more.

The parade follows that night at 7 p.m. and will start at Broadway and Anaheim Boulevard and end at Broadway and Manchester Avenue.

The fall festival is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

Alzheimer’s OC plans workshop

Alzheimer’s OC will present an in-person conservatorship workshop at the Anaheim Central Library on Oct. 27.

The one-hour workshop will begin at noon in the Multipurpose Room.

For a list of classes the organization offers, visit www.alzOC.org or call 844-373-4400.

Anaheim Beautiful property awards

Anaheim Beautiful is looking for nominations for honoring those in the city who have taken extra steps to make their property beautiful.

Nominations are being accepted now through midnight Oct. 31. Properties will be adjudicated during November and announced in December.

You can self-nominate your property or submit any residential or commercial property to be considered for an award with a photo and some basic contact.  For more information visit anaheimbeautiful.org.

Andrea Manes shares with her neighbors events and news about the Anaheim community. If you have an event to share, contact her at [email protected] or 714-815-3885.

​ Orange County Register 

In-N-Out Burger’s 2024 T-shirt is on sale

• October 26, 2023

In-N-Out Burger’s 2024 T-shirt has gone on sale online and in restaurants.

The black garment comes from the chain’s 75th anniversary collection, which debuted Sunday, Oct. 22, at a 12-hour festival at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip.

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“This one is very special to me — we went through over 40 versions of this design to get it just right for our customers,” owner and president Lynsi Snyder said in a statement. “I wanted to make sure this shirt captured many of the pieces that have made up In-N-Out Burger throughout our 75 years.”

Snyder is the granddaughter of owners Harry and Esther Snyder, who opened the first In-N-Out drive-thru in Baldwin Park on Oct. 22, 1948.

She has worked with artists designing the collector shirts since 2002, according to the company, which is now based in Irvine.

The front of the T-shirt features the In-N-Out sign with its yellow arrow. On the back, the arrow becomes a photo collage of the Snyder family and In-N-Out associates through the decades. The artist was  Kyrie Woodring, according to In-N-Out’s website.

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The shirt is made of pre-shrunk cotton and comes in sizes from small to 3XL. The cost is $19.48.

In-N-Out created about 40 commemorative items for the Company Store at its anniversary celebration. Seventeen are currently available at the In-N-Out website, including shirts, socks, jackets, backpacks, tumblers and license plate frames. A new anniversary website, ino75th.com, links to the collection.

The chain’s 2023 T-shirt, “Quality and Speed,” remains available. It was initially offered in black, but In-N-Out later added a white version.

Information: in-n-out.com

​ Orange County Register 

Prefontaine, Lindgren and the greatest cross country race ever

• October 26, 2023

As Washington State’s Gerry Lindgren started up a long, steep hill less than two miles into the 1969 Pac-8 cross country championships on the Stanford Golf Course he was where he had always seemed to be on the road, on the track, in life.

All alone.

He was full of run and confidence. The injuries and ulcer that had hounded him for the past 18 months were behind him. So here he was in the inaugural conference championships attacking the first in a series of climbs, the runner who had captured global attention for the second half of the 1960s, a grown up version of the scrawny teenager from Spokane who had upset the Soviets at the Coliseum in 1964, the world record-holder, already the winner of a record 10 NCAA titles, Gerry Lindgren, American distance running’s king of the freaking hill once again flying solo.

“When I ran cross country I would always take off like mad and get a big lead and then I could just coast and do whatever I wanted because it was over already,” Lindgren said in a telephone interview earlier this month. “So the first mile of the race I remember taking off like mad, being all by myself and going up this long hill and then I get almost to the top of the hill and then that damn Pre sprints by me. I can’t believe it. Nobody’s ever been there.”

Over the remaining miles of the 6-mile race Lindgren and Oregon freshman Steve Prefontaine would take themselves and the sport, the conference to places they had never been before, repeatedly attacking each other mile after mile, hill after hill, with a series of relentless bursts, both courageous and reckless, testimonies to their pride as much as their talent, until they crossed the finish line totally spent, literally shoulder to shoulder, colliding in combat and exhaustion in what remains the greatest cross country race ever held on American soil.

Lindgren and Prefontaine were so inseparable in the end, E. Garry Hill, the longtime editor of Track & Field News, recalled that it took “forever to adjudicate the finish picture.”

Eventually Lindgren was declared the winner although the outcome remains the source of debate in running circles more than a half-century later.

What remains clear is the epic nature of Lindgren and Prefontaine’s battle and the transformative impact the race had on college cross country and American distance running.

Hill covered 11 Olympic Games and 15 World Championships for Track & Field News, the self-proclaimed Bible of the sport. But in 1969 he was a former Washington State triple jumper who happened to be in the Bay Area interviewing for a statistician job with the Los Altos-based magazine.

“From the vantage point of today,” Hill said of the 1969 Pac-8 race “it remains in a three-way tie with a pair of Olympic races” as the greatest footrace he has ever witnessed.

The other two?

The 2000 Olympic Games 10,000-meter final in which Ethiopia Haile Gebrselassie, the defending Olympic champion and world record holder, came from behind in the closing meters to edge Kenya’s Paul Tergat, winner of five consecutive World cross country titles, by nine-hundreths of a second for the gold medal, and the 2004 Olympic 1,500 final in which Kenya’s Bernard Lagat pulled ahead of Moroco’s world record-shattering Hicham El Guerrouj halfway down the final homestretch only to have El Guerrouj to fight back to claim by twelve-hundreths the one major title that had previously eluded him.

End of a Pac-12 tradition

The Prefontaine-Lindgren showdown was the opening act of an unprecedented more than half-century run by the conference that comes to a close with the breakup of the Pac-12 and the final conference cross country championship Friday morning near Tacoma.

“The Conference of Champions is no more,” Meb Keflezighi, a Pac-10 and NCAA cross country champion at UCLA and the 2004 Olympic marathon silver medalist. “It’s hard to imagine.”

“The history that has been written with all those great athletes and those great teams and coaches to a certain degree will be lost because when you had the conference meet every year it brings back those memories to everybody and now that’s gone,” said longtime UCLA coach Bob Larsen. “Or will be gone.”

The 1969 race would awaken a sleeping giant who would in turn provide a wake-up call for the rest of the nation, forever changing the autumn landscape, shifting the sport’s balance of power to the Pac-8 and later the Pac-10 and Pac-12 from the East Coast and Midwest, and in the process pushing American distance running to new heights.

“That Pac-8 in ’69 opened a few eyes to ‘hey, there’s some great runners out there and let’s get them all to nationals and see who can win,’” said Don Kardong, who ran for host Stanford in the 1969 race and later finished fourth in the 1976 Olympic marathon.

And for most of the next decade, the winners wore the iconic lemon yellow with green lettering singlet of Oregon or the maroon and silver of Washington State.Conference teams and runners would dominate college cross country for the next decade and beyond.

Pac-8/Pac-10 runners won eight of the next 11 NCAA individual titles, Lindgren in his final collegiate race, winning his third national cross country title, his 11th NCAA championship overall, 10 days after his duel with Prefontaine. Prefontaine and Washington State’s Henry Rono by the end of the coming decade had also joined Lindgren as the then only three-time NCAA champions. Oregon’s Edward Cheserek became only the fourth man to claim three NCAA titles, winning the 2013, 2014 and 2015 races. With Stanford’s Charlie Hick’s victory last November clinched the 22nd NCAA title by a conference runner.

Pac-12 schools have won 12 NCAA men’s team titles.

“We were able to up the ante a little bit,” Lindgren said. “You had to run better in cross country to win than you ever had to before.

“It changed everything.”

How Bill Dellinger changed the sport

But perhaps the most transformative figure in the conference’s rise to national supremacy was Oregon coach Bill Dellinger.

The recent reflection on the conference’s history has shown a fresh light on a man who for too long was cast in the shadow of his mentor, iconic Oregon coach Bill Bowerman, the co-founder of Nike.

“He had immense influence on distance running in general and highlighting cross country and making it a more high profile sport in the United States especially on the West Coast,” Larsen said of Dellinger.

“He was a game-changer,” said Pat Tyson, Prefontaine’s Oregon teammate and roommate who has built his own national caliber program at Gonzaga.Dellinger was Oregon’s first great distance runner under Bowerman. Dellinger was a three-time Olympian, claiming a bronze medal at 5,000 meters in the 1964 Olympic Games. By 1968 he had returned to his alma mater to work as an assistant to Bowerman.

Between 1954 and 1962, Oregon runners won six NCAA mile or 1,500-meter titles. But Bowerman was not motivated to chase similar success through the autumn. Oregon had never sent a team to the NCAA cross country meet until 1962, a year after Oregon State won the national individual and team titles.Oregon finished second at NCAAs in 1963 and 1964. But in 1965 the NCAA increased the race distance from 4 to 6 miles and the Ducks finished a disappointing eighth place. Oregon wouldn’t send another team to NCAAs until Dellinger took over the cross country program in 1969.

“Bill Bowerman was not a fan of cross country, going to the nationals. It was rarely something he wanted to do,” Tyson said. “He wanted to use all fall as base training for outdoor track. But now that Bill Dellinger was in command and they had Pre. … Bill Bowerman gave the leash to Bill Dellinger to go with cross more at the national level.”

Dellinger guided Oregon to NCAA titles in 1971, 1973 and 1974. In the mid-70s he raised the stakes further by recruiting nationally to counter the pipeline of older Kenyan runners at Washington State, attracting schoolboy superstars like Rudy Chapa (Indiana) and Alberto Salazar (Massachusetts) and Manhattan transfer Matt Centrowitz to Eugene.

“Dellinger realized if you’re going to stay competitive you can’t just get guys that are 4:15 (mile) guys down the road and win against world-class competition,” said Rick Riley, a Pac-8 mile champion for Washington State and teammate of Lindgren’s on the 1969 team. “The game was really changing as far as high school times getting better and better and you had to reach out and look for talent. Oregon got Salazar, Rudy Chapa, all these guys. If you were going to win, that’s what you had to do. Plus in the scheme of things Dellinger upped the ante a bit of Bowerman’s training philosophy of alternating hard, easy days.

“There were more miles and the harder was harder and the easier was harder.”

Said Tyson “There was cross country before Dellinger but Dellinger was the first guy who made it honest. If we’re going to compete then we’re going to have to recruit. You bring Rudy in, you bring in Alberto and it just exploded.”

Jaw-dropping times

With a core group of runners that won the 1977 NCAA title and finished second to UTEP teams made up of predominantly older African runners in 1978 and 1979, Dellinger put together the greatest squad of North American college runners ever. Five members of the 1977 Oregon squad made Olympic teams and that doesn’t include Chapa, an NCAA champion at 5,000 meters and the American record-holder in the 3,000, who was hampered by injury in the Olympic year of 1980. Four of the first seven U.S. men under 13 minutes, 20 seconds for 5,000 were on that 1977 Ducks team.

“It would be hard to argue anything better honestly,” Washington coach Andy Powell said of the Oregon group. “That was next level. I think that has got to be the best” North American group.

That Oregon team had to run jaw-dropping times just to keep pace with rival Washington State.

In the early 70s, WSU coach John Chaplin opened up a pipeline of Kenyan runners.

“That changed the dynamic a lot,” Riley said. “That changed the whole character of the sport. Henry Rono was from another planet. I mean he did crazy stuff.”

In the space of 80 days in 1978, Rono set world records at 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 meters as well at the 3,000 steeplechase. The previous world record-holder at 10,000 was his teammate and countryman Samson Kimombwa, runner-up to Rono in the 1976 NCAA cross country race. Rono repeated in 1977. Salazar won the 1978 NCAA race and then finished second to Rono in 1979.

Until 1983 the conference held Pac-12 Northern Division and Southern Division races two weeks before the league meet.

“Just to be good at the Northern Division meet you had to be world class,” Chapa said. “If you wanted to finish in the top four, top five, you had to beat a couple of world record holders.

“My position always was and it was Alberto’s position also was that (the Kenyans) made us better. You could not be a top three finisher in the the Northern Division cross country or the Pac-8 or Pac-10 meet unless you were world class. So they actually hastened our development to the point where by the time we were sophomores or juniors we were considered world class. The competition required that you had to be that good. And so I looked at it as a real benefit.”

But the optics of Oregon’s homegrown North American squad versus Washington State’s older, already established runners further fueled the sport’s most intense rivalry.

Chapa and Salazar made their college debuts against Rono in the 1976 Pac-8 Northern Division race at Seattle’s Green Lake.

“I remember that race very well. That was my first college race and we had all heard about Washington State and the Kenyans,” Chapa said. “First college cross country event ever and at the start of the race (Oregon’s) Terry Williams and Josh Kimeto (a two-time NCAA 5,000 champion for Washington State) got into it and they actually started fighting and the race started.

“That’s what I remember the most. It took already what was a tense situation being the first race and I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. This was big time, this was not an Indiana high school cross country meet.

“Terry had certain issues … they were international athletes. Terry was a very vocal kind of guy and Kimeto took offense to it. And literally started pushing each other at the starting line.”

It wasn’t until Larsen’s UCLA squad won the 1980 Pac-10 race led by individual winner Ron Cornell that the individual or team conference champion didn’t come from Oregon or Washington State.

“It was a golden age, it truly was,” Riley said.

There would be other golden teams.

UCLA head track coach Jim Bush was so upset with the Bruins fifth-place finish in the 1969 Pac-8 meet that he vowed to never recruit another distance runner.

Over time Bush reconsidered but only slightly. Larsen and UCLA defended their conference title with just two scholarships.

Stanford runner Greg Brock recalled a discussion he had with teammate Brook Thomas after the inaugural Pac-8 meet.

“Stanford could be really good in cross country,” Brock recalled Thomas saying. “And it took a guy from the East Coast to figure that out.”

Vin Lannana, a graduate of C.W. Post, coached Stanford to NCAA men’s titles in 1996, 2002 and 2003. Lannana and Powell, a middle distance standout at Stanford, guided Oregon to national titles in 2007 and 2008, the latter team featuring two-time Olympic medalist Galen Rupp and future Olympic 1,500 champion Matthew Centrowitz.Colorado won national titles in 2013 and 2014. In the 2014 race, Oregon’s Cheserek and Eric Jenkins went 1-2 and six of the top nine finishers were from the Pac-12.

“When you’ve got six of the top nine,” Powell said. “When you have a good school like Stanford, and Oregon and Colorado that was as dominating as it gets.”

The greatest cross country race

Prefontaine remains the most dominant distance runner in American history. He was the first athlete to win four NCAA outdoor track titles in the same event (3 mile/5,000). At the time of his death in May 1975, killed in a car accident, he held all seven American records at distances between 2,000 and 10,000 meters.

Nearly a half-century after his death, Prefontaine is still perhaps American track’s most transcendent superstar, the subject of two Hollywood feature films and countless marketing campaigns by Nike, the Oregon company he made world famous.

The 1969 Pac-8 race signaled Prefontaine’s arrival.

“It was the transition from when Lindgren was dominant as the best distance runner in the country and then Pre was taking over and they ended up essentially tying after battling each other all the way through,” Kardong said. “It was quite a spectacular race, an amazing battle between the two superstars.”

Lindgren was an unlikely superstar.

He was small with a squeaky voice, no match for his distant, sometimes violent father Myrl.

“My father rejected me because I was weak,” Lindgren later told Sports Illustrated’s Kenny Moore, a college rival at Oregon. “He was the tough drinker. I couldn’t be his son.”

The problem was that Lindgren grew to view himself the same way his father did.

“I never did have the confidence in myself,” Lindgren said in a Runner’s World interview. “I would always look at myself in the mirror, I would see that same wimpy kid that I hated as a child.”

So Lindgren ran, trying to put as much distance as he could be between his father, the broken home, the wimpy kid in the mirror.

“Running was the escape,” Riley said. “That’s what filled the hole in Gerry.

“Running was the vehicle for his self esteem and his escape from a terrible home life.”

He would claim to run as much as 50 miles in a day, 200 miles a week.

Or was it 300?

“He was just such an interesting guy,” said Kardong, who moved to Spokane after graduating from Stanford . “It was hard to tell when he was being serious and when he was just kind of clowning around because he had that antic way of approaching life. So he would tell stories that couldn’t possibly be true. Or he would tell you he had done things, ‘Well, you didn’t do that Gerry.’ It was just hard to figure him out. And yet he was such a spectacular runner.

“(People would say) ‘Oh, yeah, used to see him run by three times a day.’ It might have been true. It was a lot. More than anybody else was doing. If Gerry told you he ran X number of miles, I wouldn’t believe him.”

No matter how far, how fast he ran Lindgren could not shake his demons.

He spent 10 days in jail in Pierce County, Washington in 1978 for failing to pay child support after losing a 1976 paternity suit filed in Ventura County. In 1980 he vanished, leaving behind a wife, three young children, and a financially troubled running store in Tacoma. He remained under the radar until Moore tracked him down in Hawaii in 1987.

“His friends would basically say Gerry was damaged goods,” Riley said. “But there was never a kinder, more generous guy in the world for someone who had so little.

“I roomed with him my freshman year, I hardly ever saw him. He was very much a loner. A very different personality. I always said his problems later in life you had to separate his running from his personal life. “

Lindgren first emerged on the national scene just days before Christmas 1963. Competing against an all-star high school field In an indoor meet at the Cow Palace near San Francisco, Lindgren, a 17-year-old senior at Spokane’s John Rogers High School, shattered the national prep indoor 2-mile record by 21.9 seconds, clocking in at 9 minutes, 00.0 seconds and lapping the entire seven-runner field during 22-lap race including future world mile and 1,500-meter record holder Jim Ryun, who finished 22 seconds behind Lindgren.

A few weeks later Lindgren was back at the Cow Palace to take on Australia’s Ron Clarke, a world record-holder at multiple distances, in an open race.

“He was so little he couldn’t have looked more than 13 years old,” Clarke said later.

But the kid, all 5-feet-6, 118 pounds, was already world class, pushing Clarke all the way to the finish before finishing second but lowering his own indoor national high school record to 8:40.0, a record that stood stand for 49 years until Cheserek, running for New Jersey’s St. Benedict Prep, was clocked in 8:39.15.

That summer Lindgren set a national high school record at 5,000 meters (13:44.0) that stood for 40 years until finally broken by Rupp (13:37.91), then stunned a crowd of 50,519 including U.S. attorney general Robert F. Kennedy at the Coliseum by winning the 10,000 in the U.S.-Soviet Union by nearly a 150 meters in 93-degree heat. It was the first time an American had won the event in the U.S.-Soviet series. Kennedy, it was reported, was moved to tears by Lindgren’s victory.

“I still think it’s too bad that they didn’t do a big documentary or a movie of Lindgren’s coming up through high school and winning the Russia-America meet,” Kardog said. “Because that was an unbelievable performance. Just totally out of the blue. It was one of those things that kind of ignited the distance running scene in the United States.”

Lindgren went on to win the Olympic Trials 10,000 on that same Coliseum track.

“He knocked the world on its ear with his indoor times and then when he beat the Russians,” Riley said. “And then there was a thought that he might pick up a medal or even win the Olympics” in Tokyo later that year.

Instead, battling illness and a sprained ankle, Lindgren finished ninth in an Olympic 10,000 won by another American, unknown Billy Mills, in one of the biggest upsets in the Games’ history.

“When I was in high school, I wanted to go to Oregon and everybody wanted to go to Oregon,” Lindgren said. “But Bowerman wanted nothing to do with me.”

Bowerman and Washington State coach Jack Moorberry were good friends.

“And there was pretty much a gentlemen’s agreement between Jack Moorberry and Bill Bowerman that they kind of left each other’s guys alone (in recruiting),” Riley said.

So Lindgren headed 75 miles south on U.S.-195 to Pullman and Washington State. Freshmen were ineligible to compete in college competition under NCAA rules at the time. But the NCAA, engaged in a turf war at the time with the Amateur Athletic Union, then track’s national governing body, also prohibited college athletes from competing in the U.S. Championships. Lindgren, ignoring an NCAA vow to strip him of his college eligibility and dozens of death threats, defied the ban. He lost to Mills in the 1965 U.S. Championships 6-mile by a margin so small that both men were credited with the world record (27:11.6).

A year later he just missed breaking Clarke’s 3-mile world record, running 12:53.0 in the wind and rain on a muddy track in a nearly empty Husky Stadium in Seattle. His 11 NCAA titles were the most ever by a track and cross country athlete, eclipsing Jesse Owens’ eight national crowns, the previous record. He won the 1966 and 1967 NCAA cross country titles and then redshirted during the 1968 season to focus on the Olympic Trials that fall.

“I don’t think people appreciated the world-class running that Gerry did,” Riley said. “I don’t think people appreciate, A) he won 11 NCAA titles. The only one he lost was when Ryun outkicked him indoors (in the NCAA Championships 2-mile). He could not run as a freshman. There’s another three (NCAA titles) at least. The 12:53 was unbelievable, he just missed the world record, running in the vast empty, windy, crappy track at Washington. He just was the guy who did not have the personality that engaged people like Steve Prefontaine.

“He did not engage the public or excite the public like Pre.”

There was a buzz surrounding Prefontaine even before he landed on the Oregon campus in the fall of 1969.

Stanford’s Brock recalled cooling down with Oregon runners after beating them in the 3-mile in a 1968 dual meet in Palo Alto .

“All the Oregon guys could talk about was this kid Prefontaine,” Brock said.

Two Oregon runners, Arne Kvalheim and Roscoe Divine, joined Dellinger on a recruiting trip to Prefontaine’s hometown of Coos Bay on the Oregon Coast. Kvalheim had just set the collegiate 2-mile record. Divine was a world-class miler. But on a run on the beach, Prefontaine charged ahead of the two Ducks stars.

“Am I going too fast for you?” Prefontaine asked looking back at the pair. “I’ll slow the pace down. Can you keep up with me?”

Riley encountered that same confidence when he called Prefontaine in the spring of 1969 to make a recruiting pitch for Washington State. Three years earlier, Riley, running for Spokane’s Ferris High School, set the national high school outdoor 2-mile record (8:48.4).

“He was a little full of himself,” Riley said recalling the phone conversation. “Very confident, very confident and I appreciated that. He didn’t mince any words about what his goals were and what he wanted to do and what he thought he could do.”

Before hanging up, Prefontaine told Riley “I’m going to break your national high school record.”

“I remember thinking this kid is a confident kid, man,” Riley continued. “But most of the time he could deliver.”

True to his word, Prefontaine ran 8:41.5 in April 1969 to break Riley’s record. That July Prefontaine raced Lindgren in a 2-mile race in Honolulu, the WSU star winning 8:45.6 to 8:48.8.

They would meet four months later in Prefontaine’s collegiate debut at the Pac-8 Northern Division Championships in Corvallis.

The rain-drenched, leaf-covered 6-mile course at Avery Park was a soggy, sloppy mess. The course had several stretches of pavement so WSU coach Moorberry instructed his runners to wear racing flats. Prefontaine wore adidas spikes.

“Pre was a teenager, 18 years old still but fearless,” Tyson said. “Total 100 percent confidence, but total respect. I wouldn’t say Pre worshipped Lindgren but massively respected him.”

The Oregon freshman led early only to have Lindgren build a 60-meter lead in the second and third miles. But then the course hit a treacherous stretch and with Lindgren, already nursing a sore ankle, slipping and sliding, Prefontaine pulled away for a 29:13.8 to 29:41 victory.

Two weeks later they met again at the Pac-8 meet at Stanford.

“Lindgren wouldn’t say much,” Riley said referring to the Northern Division race. “He wouldn’t say I’m going to kick Pre’s ass next time. He just withdrew into himself. He did not like to lose. He was not demonstrative when he won. He’s a pretty humble guy. But you knew with Gerry that week, if Pre was going to beat him this time it was going to be a bloodletting. It was going to be one hell of a race, because Lindgren was that kind of guy.

“He didn’t exude confidence like Pre. He didn’t talk about himself like Pre, but you knew that during the week, you knew that he pushed his foot a little harder on the acceleration during training. He pushed the pace a little bit more. We ran our harder stuff a little harder. You basically knew as his teammate that he was going to go after it.

“You knew something special was coming.”

Prefontaine and Lindgren covered the first mile in 4:23 reducing the rest of the field to spectators.

“Just crazy pace,” said Kardong, who finished 14th that day. “Each of them was trying to put the other one away right from the gun.”

Riley, Brock and Oregon’s Steve Savage, later a 1972 Olympian in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, led the rest of the field.

“I was in the chase pack at 4:29,” Brock said. “My fastest ever through the mile on that course was 4:40. I thought, ‘Oh, boy, I just have to hang in for dear life.’”

As Lindgren started up the first hill he thought he had dropped Prefontaine.

But “all of a sudden I got up to that hill and I wasn’t ahead of everybody and that was something new to me,” Lindgren said. “That was something new to me. I was out of my element.

“So I had to hustle up to the top of the hill and then back down again and I got ahead of Pre and Pre’s fighting me off and I’m thinking my goodness this has never happened to me in cross country.

“And he kept me out of my element the whole race. Not once would he let me go. The whole race we were neck and neck. I’d go by him and try to get a little bit of a lead and he just wouldn’t let me have it.”

At one point the course took a U-turn.

“And you could glance across and see Lindgren and Prefontaine and it was epic,” Brock recalled. “They were shoulder to shoulder. They were so close together they bounced off each other a few times. You knew you were watching greatness.”

On they attacked.

“He kept me out of my element the whole race,” Lindgren said. “Not once would he let me go. And I sprinted several times as hard as I could go just to get away from him and boy did he fight back. The most I ever got away was three steps.”

Said Riley, “Lindgren and Pre were out front just hammering on each other and of course it came right down to the end where it was literally a photo finish.”

At the top of a final hill, Prefontaine led.

“Went up that last hill, he was a good step ahead of me and I thought it’s all over because he’ll just take off and then he didn’t,” Lindgren said. “He was tired. I was tired.”

Yet down the final 400 meters, through a gauntlet of screaming fans, neither would give an inch. In the closing meters they collided, their shoulders and elbows crashing into each other.

“My indelible memory is of the two of them in lockstep coming down the long finishing straight at the Stanford golf course,” Hill said. “And them leaning into each other in the closing strides.”

They crossed the finish line leaning into each, forever bonded together by a race for the ages.

“He was strong, using his arms to push me into the crowd on the left side,” Lindgren said. “Because he was using his strength that way instead of going toward the finish line I was able to get my nose to the finish line just before his did.

“It was that close.

“It was my toughest cross country race for sure. It was a real wake-up for me. Because I had never been challenged when I was feeling good and all of sudden this little guy is challenging me.”

Lindgren would go on to win his third NCAA cross country title at New York’s Van Cortlandt Park.

“I was scared, really scared,” Lindgren later told Prefontaine biographer Tom Jordan. “So I wanted to lead the whole way.”

Prefontaine, still feeling the effects of the Pac-8 race, was third. He would never lose a cross country race again.

He took the 1970 NCAA race and thought he had led the Ducks to their first team title as well. “We had the (first place) trophy with us on the plane home,” Tyson said. But after a protest, a controversial review of the finish resulted in Villanova being awarded a belated victory.

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“To this day, to this day, everybody would say Oregon got robbed,” Tyson said.

Prefontaine repeated in 1971 in a race he almost didn’t run. After Oregon finished second to WSU in the Pac-8 race Ducks athletic director Norv Ritchey decided to only send Prefontaine not the team to the NCAA meet in Knoxville.”Pre said if the team isn’t going, I’m not going,” Tyson recalled.

Ritchey gave in and Oregon won its first national title.

Bowerman, still dismissive of cross country, didn’t make the trip to Tennessee. A week after their victory the university took a photo of the national champions.

“It wasn’t a big deal and then we started winning trophies and it was a big deal,” Tyson said. “Bowerman actually popped in the photo of the NCAA championship team.”

​ Orange County Register 

Endorsement: Vote no on recall of Santa Ana Councilmember Jessie Lopez

• October 26, 2023

Voters have started receiving their ballots for the recall election of Santa Ana Ward 3 Councilmember Jessie Lopez. We urge an emphatic No vote. The final date to submit ballots is Nov. 14.

We certainly have our differences with her on policy. But this recall really is about the lock-grip on power in the city of the Santa Ana Police Officers Association. The police union and its allies have offered a litany of tangential reasons for the recall, but there’s no reason to pretend this is anything other than a power grab.

Lopez retorted in a Register op-ed that the real reason for the recall is that she stood up to longtime police union boss Gerry Serrano, who was recently “separated from city service.” Lopez supported requiring Serrano to actually perform police work, since he was being paid with taxpayer funds, and pushed “for a public review of millions of dollars in healthcare funds being given to the POA every year.”

That is why she is facing a recall attempt. Don’t let anyone mislead you into thinking otherwise.   

According to the Registrar of voters, the recall itself will cost taxpayers from $607,403 to $666,990. A replacement election could double that amount. What a waste. 

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It was just three years ago when the POA led the recall of Councilmember Ceci Iglesias for opposing $25 million in fiscally irresponsible police raises. Politically, Iglesias and Lopez couldn’t be any more different. The key linking both recalls is the ire of the POA.

When in 1911 Gov. Hiram Johnson explained the recall and initiative and referendum reforms, he said they were not “the panacea for all our political ills.” The 2024 primary election for this office is next March 5, just around the corner. Then those who disagree with Lopez on policy can back another candidate when the next election comes.

But if the POA gets away with another recall, no councilmember would dare resist it in the future. It would become the dictatorship of Santa Ana. This union must be tamed. It must be brought under the control of the voters. The only way to do that is to roundly defeat the recall of Jessie Lopez. Vote No.

​ Orange County Register 

Strongest US economic growth since 2021 puts Fed in tough spot

• October 26, 2023

Rich Miller and Augusta Saraiva | Bloomberg

The US economy likely expanded in the third quarter at the fastest clip in nearly two years, a surprising acceleration primarily powered by a consumer reaping the benefits of resilient job growth, rising wealth and easing inflation.

Gross domestic product is projected to have grown at an annual rate of 4.5% last quarter, more than double the pace in the prior period, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists ahead of the release of government data on Thursday. That would be the fastest pace since the end of 2021, when the economy was shaking off the effects of the pandemic.

“The US consumer has been surprising most predictions, including the Federal Reserve predictions, which is almost looking for the US consumer to soften, and yet they don’t,” Elie Maalouf, chief executive officer at InterContinental Hotels Group, said on the company’s Oct. 20 earnings call.

The blowout quarter is good news for President Joe Biden, who’s had trouble convincing Americans still hurting from persistent inflation that his economic policies are working. But it poses a bit of a quandary for Fed Chair Jerome Powell & Co.

In aggressively raising interest rates since March 2022, the central bank has been trying to quell inflation by dampening demand while avoiding a recession. While inflation has cooled as disruptions to global supply chains from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine have dwindled, US domestic demand remains robust despite the Fed’s efforts.

A strong job market is still propelling consumer spending, and business activity is gaining momentum. Additional signs of persistently strong growth “could put further progress on inflation at risk and could warrant further tightening of monetary policy,” Powell said last week.

The Fed chief signaled that policymakers are likely to hold rates steady at their meeting next week, while leaving the door open to another increase in the future.

“He may not have a lot of patience if the growth numbers don’t cool pretty quickly here,” JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief economist Bruce Kasman said.

Slowdown Ahead

Powell noted that forecasters generally expect growth to slow in the fourth quarter and next year after a “very strong” third quarter. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg earlier this month predicted that GDP will expand at an annual rate of just 0.7% this quarter, according to the median projection.

The trouble is that many forecasters — including those at the Fed — have been caught off guard by the economy’s resilience in the face of the central bank’s repeated rate hikes.

“You could have knocked me over with a feather, but it’s where we are,” said Diane Swonk, the chief economist at KPMG LLP, who’s forecasting 5.5% third-quarter growth.

Consumers went on a spending spree from July through September as solid wage gains and ebbing inflation left them with more money to pay for goods and services. A record surge in household wealth coming into this year — courtesy of advances in home and equity prices — probably also played a part in encouraging consumption.

‘Temporary Boost’

Outlays may also have been boosted last quarter by spending stemming from concert tours by Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and summer blockbuster movies “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” according to Bloomberg Economics chief US economist Anna Wong. That won’t be in play this quarter.

Read more: Taylor Swift-Led Summer Seen Adding $8.5 Billion to US Growth

“A lot of this seems to be driven by consumer spending on discretionary items and discretionary services,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior US economist at BNP Paribas SA. “We think that it’s a temporary boost.”

Also likely to be temporary: A forecasted decline in imports and a rise in inventories last quarter, two developments that economists say were surprising given the strength of consumer demand and are thus unlikely to be replicated in the final three months of 2023.

Housing is seen by some economists as having added to GDP last quarter after being a drag for over two years. But the renewed rise in mortgage rates in recent weeks on the back of climbing Treasury yields threatens to squelch the revival in residential investment.

“It’s a short-lived bounce that’s already reversing,” Swonk said.

The economy will also face a number of other headwinds this quarter that it didn’t in the prior three months, including the resumption of student loan payments after a pandemic pause and expanding strike by auto workers. Other risks include a possible government shutdown next month and the threat of a wider war in the Middle East.

Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi said he expects growth to slow to around 1% this quarter after coming in at 3.8% in the third.

Average them together and “it would be a good second half of the year, much closer to the economy’s potential and much more consistent with a roughly stable unemployment rate,” Zandi said. And that’d be more comfortable for the Fed, he added.

–With assistance from Chris Middleton and Vince Golle.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.

​ Orange County Register