Chamber recognizes members’ community service

Chamber recognizes members’ community service

Fifty years ago many businesses were new to the area, but that didn’t stop Lee Cohn from sitting down over a cup of coffee with a handful of local merchants and forming the first Calabasas Chamber of Commerce.

Cohn, the Chamber’s first president in 1955 and a prominent Ventura County landowner, was given a Legacy Pioneer Award for his community service at last week’s 2005 Chamber installation ceremony.

Recognizing the importance of incentives to help his organization grow, Cohn reportedly offered a car battery as one of the early prizes for Chamber members.

The Chamber began with only eight members; today there are more than 500. Cohn is now 87.

The Chamber last week also recognized Frank and Betty-Jeanne Farmer as winners of the 2005 Bill Van Gieson Memorial Award.

Van Gieson, a community pioneer and long-time volunteer, was former owner of the Calabasas Saddlery.

Past Van Gieson recipients include Mac and Alice Stelle, Dennis Washburn, Ray Phillips and Flo Klein.

Betty Farmer twice received a Volunteer of the Year award from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and is a member of Daughters of the American Revolution.

She her husband have lived in the same house in old Town Calabasas for more than 50 years and operate an official rain reporting station for the county of Los Angeles.

Betty Farmer said the area has received 29.38 inches of rain since the season began Oct. 1, more than three-and-a-half times last year’s total. They use the same rain guage first employed by Frank Farmer’s father in 1927.

—John Loesing