Connie Worden (left) and Rene Veluzat (right), SCV Man and Woman of the Year for 1975, pass the torch to Joyce Wayman and Dick Millar, the 1976 Man and Woman of the Year.

Connie Worden (1975) was a member of the William S. Hart Union High School District Governing Board, a leader on the Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee, and co-chair of the effort to form Canyon County. Although county formation prevailed at the ballot box locally in 1976 (and again in 1978), secession required the consent of the entire county, and the rest of Los Angeles County refused to let the Santa Clarita Valley go. A decade later, Worden was vice chair of the successful effort to form the city of Santa Clarita.

Joyce Wayman (1976) was Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital’s first director of volunteers. Normally a paid position, Wayman filled the full-time role as a volunteer. Later offered the position for pay, she declined. She had started helping in 1973 at Hillside Hospital in Saugus, Henry Mayo’s predecessor, after volunteering for several years at Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills. A 1956 Newhall arrival, Wayman was active in PTA while her children and stepchildren were in school, and she raised money and hosted foreign exchange students through American Field Service.

Realtor Richard G. "Dick" Millar (1976) was president of the Newhall-Saugus-Valencia Chamber of Commerce in 1974-75 and again in 1977 when he negotiated a $0 lease to move the chamber into a new headquarters building in Newhall.

Rene Veluzat (1975) chaired the effort to remodel and landscape the historic Pardee House, in preparation for the occupancy of the Newhall-Saugus-Valencia Chamber of Commerce. The Santa Clarita Boys Club (later Boys & Girls Club) leased the Pardee House from 1970 to February 1977; the following month, the chamber negotiated a $0 lease with property owner Pacific Telephone in exchange for remodeling and future upkeep. At the time, the building was located at the triangle of Newhall Avenue, Market and Walnut streets. In 1987 the chamber moved to the ground floor of the new City Hall building on Valencia Boulevard. Pacific Telephone donated the Pardee House to the Santa Clarita Valley Historical Society in 1992; on Aug. 4 of that year it was moved to Heritage Junction Historic Park at William S. Hart Park.