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Sometimes you have to leave a place -- or lose it -- before you realize how much you love it.
That's the way things are in Hermon, a corner of Los Angeles that time didn't forget but just about everyone else did.
Hermon is a half-square-mile residential community tucked in a valley east of downtown Los Angeles. It is bounded by the Arroyo Seco and the Pasadena Freeway on the north, South Pasadena on the east and hilly open space on the south and west.
It was created in 1903 by Methodists who came to Los Angeles to open a church school. For the first part of its 100 years it was a gentle refuge from the stresses of the city that quietly reflected its namesake: the biblical Mt. Hermon, a sacred landmark at the Golan Heights headwaters of the River Jordan.
For the past quarter-century the 1,100-home neighborhood has continued to be a quiet refuge. But its identity disappeared, residents contend, when the community's name was hijacked.
In 1978 then-City Councilman Art Snyder renamed venerable Hermon Avenue "Via Marisol" for his 3-year-old daughter, Erin-Marisol. Not only were the street signs changed, but the freeway's Hermon exit was renamed Via Marisol as well.
Locals were outraged. But there were only about 2,500 of them at the time and their tiny number didn't carry much weight at City Hall.
When residents begged officials to at least mention the community at the Via Marisol freeway exit, Caltrans engineers complied. They added insult to injury by misspelling the name as "Herman," however.
"I'd see the name on the freeway when traffic was jammed and I was looking for an alternate route and wonder what it was," said Charles Fall, a retired state employment worker. "The only 'Herman' I knew of was the music group Herman and the Hermits."
On one of his freeway bypass commute trips, Fall drove through Hermon and was enchanted by its feeling of isolation. Fourteen years ago he purchased a hillside home there and moved in.
These days there are 3,327 people living in Hermon, according to Los Angeles planning statistics drawn from the 2000 census. And the locals...