L A Best Program

Six-year-old Ricky Vasquez jumped up and down and cheered when he hit a golf ball into a box of chicken nuggets. He was rewarded for chipping balls into food, animals and faux buildings Tuesday in a temporary miniature golf course set up at Vena Avenue Elementary School. Children from the L.A.'s BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow) program designed the miniature golf course, with some help from local businesses, as an after-school activity.

Almost 15% of American children between 5 and 12 are unsupervised for various lengths of time when they come home after school, according to the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. Some must make their own way from school to their after-school care site. Others--the "self-care latch-key children"--go home alone. "It's a fairly dire situation and it is always a struggle because how are working parents going to get their children from the school to the program or from school to home," says Dianne Philibosian, associate dean of Communication, Health and Human Services at Cal State Northridge and chairwoman of the state of California Child Development Programs Advisory Committee.

Myra Mayberry had an older brother. His name was Fernando, and he was cool. He wore the latest fashions, he walked tall and with a swagger and he loved his little sister. He was proud of Myra and her running; he celebrated more than anyone when Myra won a race. Mayberry, a 1990 graduate of USC who would prefer we don't know her age--"Just say I'm in the prime of my running career," she says--doesn't have an older brother anymore.

She was in her 70s when she began painting; by the time she died at 101 in 1961, folk artist Anna Mary (Grandma) Moses had long been accorded international fame for her vivid primitive works.