SMITH: A village lauds its first graduates

Every day there's something to celebrate at The Children's Village, the visionary home for foster kids that Lia Rowley felt compelled to build following the murder in 1997 of an unparented Santa Rosa child of 12 named Georgia Moses.

But it's been an especially big deal for the 6-year-old Village to cheer its first two residents to graduate from high school.

One earned a diploma from Montgomery, the other from Northwest Prep. Both will go on to SRJC.

Before coming to The Children's Village, many of the 23 current residents were abused, neglected, bounced around and separated from their brothers and sisters. Now they're well cared for by resident foster grandparents.

At a graduation party at the Village, former foster child and board member Walter Scruggs urged the grads to cherish what a bit of friendship and support did for their lives and to pay it forward.

LARRY'S FORD will be back on the lawn of Santa Rosa's Juilliard Park on Sunday. The Father's Day car show wouldn't be the same without it.

Larry Vivier had run the Cook House diner, across A Street from the park, for more than 20 years when he died last October at age 74. A lover of Detroit steel, he created an annual car show in the park and showed off his baby, a 1937 Ford hot rod.

The show, which starts at 9 a.m. Sunday and is open to more entries, is a benefit for community deeds of the local Engineering Contractors Association.

Larry's widow, Rose, hopes to get to the show. She recalled that Larry was working on his black, flame-swept Ford when he died.

"He just loved that car," she sighed.

HART SKIPS: Steve Hart, the senior reporter in the PD newsroom, just retired after 36 years of distinguished work as a Cal-educated Santa Rosa native who knows and loves this area and is a master at getting the story on time and right.

Steve started in the Ukiah bureau in 1976 and covered Mendocino County for years before transferring to the main office in Santa Rosa. He likes to say his career spanned the newspaper business "from Gutenberg to Zuckerberg."

After a great run, the avid outdoorsman anticipates more hiking, more paddling.

FRANZ KAFKA WAY is a snippet of a street near where Kawana Springs Road crosses Petaluma Hill Road.

It was named by planning consultant Guillermo Lehman, a playful ode to the bureaucratic surrealism he endured in the pursuit of permits to introduce development to southeasternmost Santa Rosa.

I was in the neighborhood this week and happened upon a second cleverly named street, just below the Sonoma Academy campus. As I drove it I found myself humming the Burger King jingle and wondering if the same happens to the residents of Havitur Way.