Olmo

Re "Frankie Finds the Tears for His Father," Commentary, Dec. 26: What a wonderful day-after Christmas gift! I've followed Frank del Olmo's columns on [his autistic son] Frankie since he started them in 1995. How strong and courageous you have been, Magdalena Beltran-del Olmo, and Frankie, how proud of you your dad would be. Ginger Tauber Los Angeles

A few minutes before a screening of "Filly Brown" last week, Oscar-nominated actor Edward James Olmos tried to explain why the new family drama about a female Los Angeles street poet "is the most hopeful film I've ever worked on in my life. " Olmos, 66, had gathered in a backroom at Universal CityWalk's AMC theaters with his costar and longtime friend Lou Diamond Phillips, 51, and Gina Rodriguez, 28, whose performance as an aspiring rap star helped land "Filly Brown" a spot at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.

Many thanks to Frank del Olmo for his wonderfully clean explanation of what happened in the Reality Based Learning California contretemps ("Romer Beats Back an Ambush," Commentary, March 24). Not only Supt. Roy Romer but many Angelenos struggle to find direct lines in the politics surrounding every decision to be well hidden. As Del Olmo writes, " . . . met privately. . . ." Doesn't that clarify the entire imbroglio? Such foolishness needs exposure. Marty Rauch Los Angeles

With temperatures in the 90s, Jesus Olmos spent last Wednesday building a fence. Almost every hour, while sweating and full of dirt, he thought about his son, Edgar. "This is the biggest day of my life," Jesus said. "My son is going to be the first to go to college." Edgar, a 6-foot-4 pitcher at Lake Balboa Birmingham, signed a letter of intent with Arizona that day. Jesus never made it past the fourth grade in Mexico. His wife, Marisela, stopped her formal education in the fifth grade.

Frank del Olmo states that "it's time Washington changed its tune" regarding U.S.-Cuba relations (Commentary, Feb. 14). When the Cuban government returns all confiscated property that it stole from the rightful owners after the 1959 revolution, then and only then should we modify our beat. ALBERT FLYNN Burbank

Southern Californians and Times readers are extraordinarily lucky to have a simple-spoken, common-sense commentator on the follies and prejudices of ethnic politics and imperialism in Frank del Olmo. PETER S. NICHOLAS Los Angeles

Re "You're adopting who?" Opinion, May 21 What a heartwarming and totally pragmatic piece on adoption. All too often we question the reasons why couples adopt instead of praising them for seeing the need and having the willingness to share their love and care, especially for children with extreme needs. Not since the late Frank del Olmo wrote about his personal experiences with his autistic son has a piece so forthrightly and sensitively told of both the sorrows and great joys of raising such a child.

In reference to your July 1 Outtakes item on actor Edward James Olmos playing the late inger Jim Croce: Will this start a new Hollywood fad? If so, why not Eddie Murphy as Abraham Lincoln? John Lone as Jack Kennedy? Or Cheech and Chong as the Wright Brothers? Since Olmos isn't required to sing, why not save Rob Lowe from obscurity and cast him, with a little heavy makeup, as Sammy Davis Jr.? I guess Hollywood figured casting an Italian-American actor to play an Italian-American like Croce might give them the idea they could play roles other than Mafia dons, pimply juveniles and oversexed buffoons.

Frank del Olmo is on assignment.

Frank del Olmo's " 'To Protect and to Serve'--and Fear" (Commentary, Aug. 6) is a wonderful expose of the age-old grievance Latinos have had against police abuse in Southern California. However, Del Olmo, in a bizarre twist, attempts to discredit the activists, the very sector which has monitored the same police misconduct he so eloquently scorns. Del Olmo's words, together with the statements made by Mayor Richard Riordan (Aug. 5), accusing the Communist Party and the diminutive Brown Beret group of inflaming the climate, clearly smack of McCarthyism.

Re "You're adopting who?" Opinion, May 21 What a heartwarming and totally pragmatic piece on adoption. All too often we question the reasons why couples adopt instead of praising them for seeing the need and having the willingness to share their love and care, especially for children with extreme needs. Not since the late Frank del Olmo wrote about his personal experiences with his autistic son has a piece so forthrightly and sensitively told of both the sorrows and great joys of raising such a child.

Re "Del Olmo School is dedicated in memory of Times columnist," Nov. 2 The Times' story was a fitting tribune to Frank del Olmo, a reporter, editorial writer and columnist who cared deeply about issues of fairness, equality and compassion. He probably didn't know it at the time, but his ascension in The Times' newsroom after the tragic death of Times columnist Ruben Salazar in 1970 ensured that Del Olmo would follow up on Salazar's columns, in which he shined a reporter's flashlight on vexing issues that faced the area's Mexican American population.

The new campus on the edge of Koreatown occupies the site where the first American version of "Godzilla" was filmed. So one early suggestion for a name was Godzilla Elementary, which would go with the motto: A monster of a school. But Principal Eugene Hernandez and the naming committee inclined another way.

A big booth near the entrance of the 2006 Los Angeles Latino Book and Family Festival gave fabled bookman Rueben Martinez a bully pulpit Saturday from which to promote the value of reading. "If you read 20 minutes a day, you'll read a million words a year -- and learn as many as 3,000 new words in the process," said Martinez, a recent winner of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation grant and a keen student of the Latino literary scene.

Harold P. Olmo, a grape breeder and viticulturist who played a key role in the development of the California wine industry starting in the 1930s, died June 30. He was 96. For years Olmo was known as the Indiana Jones of viticulture for his travel adventures on horseback and camel in Central Asia during the 1930s and '40s to collect endangered vines that he then cultivated in California.

EXCUSE me if I don't get the premise of Eddie Olmos' film "Walkout" ["Reborn in East L.A.," Dec. 25]. The Chicano protests are over, as of 37 years ago, and now Olmos wants to restart them in hopes "that the kids will walk out again." For what purpose, Eddie? Hang on a second! Please! Give us the records of 50 to 100 kids who have been denied applications to universities as of this fall. Please let the facts be known! Just because a student is of Latino heritage (Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran, Peruvian, you name it)

I greatly resent the tone and substance of Frank del Olmo's Dec. 15 column. I'm against illegal immigration and also against preferential treatment for anyone. Therefore I supported Props. 187 and 209. Does this make me a malevolent immigrant basher? Both of my late parents were legal immigrants to this wonderful country. Since I try to abide by the laws of the land and pay my taxes when they're due and try to support the principles contained in the U.S. Constitution, I hope I qualify as a lily-white Republican, which Del Olmo snidely refers to in his disingenuous column.

MOVIE producers don't show up every day on Cesar Chavez Boulevard in Boyle Heights. So it's surprising how little fuss the locals make when actor-director Edward James Olmos and his production team arrive one recent morning to scout locations for the upcoming HBO film "Walkout," a dramatization of the seminal 1968 Chicano student protests at high schools on L.A.'s Eastside.

Two days before the Claremont High School newspaper went to press, reporters received the confirmation they had been seeking for weeks: A 23-year-old Stanford graduate had posed as a student the previous spring. The Wolfpacket broke the story of Jeremy Iversen.