Masters of ceremony

Every time a Los Angeles County dignitary grins into the camera and cuts a big red ribbon, somewhere up there Arthur “Ski” Wisniewski is smiling, too.

Back in the early ’80s, Wisniewski, a carpenter and manager in the Internal Services Division, ushered in the county’s modern era of ceremonial snipping when he handcrafted a pair of immense solid wood scissors with sharp metal blades that actually cut.

Of the five original pairs (one for each supervisorial district), only two remain in service. They’re closely guarded implements, ferried to events in custom-crafted cases and quickly packed away once the TV cameras have gone home.

“We have to more or less guard them now,” says Randy Bittner, ISD’s section manager for facilities operations services, who keeps the scissors locked up when they’re not in use. “The guys never take their eyes off them.”

“The guys” are ISD’s special events section—the backstage crew for virtually every public event staged by a county supervisor or department anywhere in L.A. County.

If ceremonial events provide a symbolic narrative of government work in action, these guys are the story’s unsung ghost writers.

They work out of a hangar in East Los Angeles equipped with a carpentry room and well-stocked with folding chairs, tables, lattice backdrops, tents, gold-painted shovels (for groundbreakings) and even a couple of ice machines.

You get the feeling that, given a cake and a deejay, these guys could stage a pretty good wedding reception if they had to. It hasn’t come to that, but they have set up events ranging from hospital wing openings and park gymnasium groundbreakings to postage stamp unveilings and supervisorial trail rides. They created an impromptu “green room” for Seal when he performed at the county’s Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. Their carpentry work ranges from ADA-accessible walkways to those oak podiums featuring the county seal, regularly seen at press conferences on the nightly news.

“We see our programs on television all the time. I tell my wife, ‘I built that,’ ” says Sylvester “Sly” Anthony, the team’s carpenter supervisor.

As for the scissors, the ISD team oversees a dry run before each event to make sure the ceremonial cut takes place without a hitch. (The advice is always the same: Make sure the ribbon is pulled taut.)

Even though the scissors are as tall as a toddler, they are surprisingly easy to use. Despite being pressed into service at hundreds of events over the years, they’ve held their edge without any special maintenance. 

“It’s not like trimming hedges,” Bittner says.

In recent years, they’ve helped to inaugurate projects big and small, including the new County-USC Medical Center, the new emergency room at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, the Department of Public Social Services’ mobile food stamp sign-up van and a fitness zone at El Cariso Park in Sylmar.

By all accounts, creating the scissors was Wisniewski’s idea.

“I believe he took it upon himself. He just wanted a better, more impressive pair of scissors,” says Paul English, ISD’s division manager of craft operations.

Wisniewski’s decision to equip his creation with a working blade automatically elevated them above the props widely used elsewhere—the ones that look good for the cameras but can’t shear through even the flimsiest ribbon.

“Most of them don’t cut,” English says. “I’ve never seen one with an edge.”

Wisniewski got to see his scissors in plenty of action before he retired in 1997 after 35 years of county service. He died last year, but his scissors remain on active duty—as sharp as ever.

“We like ‘em,” English says. “They’re visually impressive.”

Posted 3/2/11