Toni Devito:  

To whomever may be reading this: If you are a curious Pilgrim graduate, I am the Director of Development & Alumni Affairs, and the mother of member of the Class of 2010. My involvement with Pilgrim is at the very end of this document, so if you would like to know more about what I do at Pilgrim, feel free to scroll down. If you know me from Culver City, well, I probably haven't spoken to you in a really long time. I moved away from CC right after graduation & my family moved to Oregon 4 years later. I've been back in LA for 19 years now, & attended our 20th reunion at the Omni. I was definitely the grad with the youngest child -- I was still on maternity leave & I think my baby was just 3 weeks old! I look forward to hearing from old and new friends alike. Cheers, Toni Here is "My Story": I grew up in Culver City, attending public schools there and graduating from Culver High in 1972. I attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 1977. In my senior year, my entire family moved to Oregon. After college I worked in a number of jobs before deciding that as a lover of art I should work for some sort of arts organization. I landed my first "real" job as the receptionist at the Portland Opera Association. Knowing nothing about opera, I borrowed LPs from the public library to listen up. I still love opera, it is so over-the-top and unreal that it is magical. "Magic Flute" and "Don Giovanni" are favorites. (I was a supernummerary in the Portland production of "Giovanni," it was a unique experience to stand on stage while the Don goes down!) A new development director at the opera wanted an assistant, and thus began my career in fundraising. Kathleen Brumwell was a great teacher. My next move was to the sadly now-defunct ahead-of-its-time Portland Center for the Visual Arts. We brought in 'edgy' artists (visual and performing) from all over the country. Julian Schnabel, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucinda Childs dance troupe, my hero John Cage ... it was a very vibrant experience. In 1984 I moved to San Francisco to work for the Fine Arts Museums, the polar opposite of the skeletal operation a t PCVA. My sole responsbility was grants writing (no scrubbing toilets before openings anymore!). I learned a lot from the people I worked with, and loved driving to the Palace of the Legion of Arts overlooking the Pacific everyday. Marriage to my sweetheart brought a move to NYC, where my husband attended grad school at NYU. It was an absolutely magical time. We were broke but had a blast, attending theater, dance, opera, concerts, art openings, dinner parties at friends' apts... I saw the Mets play at my first baseball game, & remain their fan. (Yankees = Evil.) We had many wonderful friends in the city and it seems we were always laughing. I worked for several years at the Brooklyn Museum, which was a wonderful discovery, and then moved into my dream job as the director of development at the New Museum. I walked to work, & loved it! I also had the terrific pleasure of working for Marcia Tucker, who should have been named a national treasure, rest her outrageous soul. 1991 brought momentous changes: I discovered I was pregnant, and Michael received 3 job offers from Hollywood studios. Except for a brief visit a year before, I had not been back in LA since 1975. Once we moved, I was in culture shock. It took me about 3 years before I could appreciate the wild diversity of this sprawling ugly city surrounded by equally wild natural beauty. I will always honor Thomas Rhoads, another Reedie, who hired me when I was 6 months pregnant with Walker to be the development director at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Tom is one of the smartest and hardest working people I've ever met, and a gentleman through and through. Without his early tenacity, SMMOA would never have made it to its 20th birthday, which it celebrates this year. Eighteen months after Walker's birth, his brother Gabriel joined our family. After a few years of juggling small children, with both ...Expand for more