Chuck’s Bargain; Tran’s Crayons; Port’s Storm

Chuck Martin grew up in modest circumstances, but there was nothing modest about his brains and drive—the stuff that got him to Ohio State, where he worked 40 to 50 hours a week at minimum-wage jobs while gobbling up knowledge at a pace that earned him a B.S. degree with five majors: mathematics, physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, and business. His penchant for melding an insatiable intellectual curiosity with a hard-nosed approach to investing came naturally. “For $72 a term I could take all the courses I wanted … and I did,” Martin once said (see obituary, page 1) … His wife, Twyla, was his true companion through plenty of adventures in business, education, philanthropy and the arts. The couple managed to combine all of those in one particular labor of love that’s poised to carry on this week, with Twyla already having logged a year of work with co-sponsors Eve Kornyei Ruffatto, Harriet Sandhu, Diana Martin and Joyce Tucker on the 18th Annual Women In Focus Conference at Chapman University. This year’s panel will offer views from four women who have made it in Hollywood as directors, and another billed as the first female Saudi Arabian filmmaker. The program is a bargain on par with Chuck’s $72-all-you-can-learn deal at Ohio State—it’s free and open to the public, with the discussion set to start at 1:30 p.m. on April 7 at the Dodge College of Media and Arts at Chapman … Khanh Tran figures that a bargain box of crayons was a key to his transformation from stranger in a strange land to the top ranks of OC’s executive set, a journey that has included a bachelor’s degree from Whittier College, an MBA from UCLA, the president’s post at Pacific Life, and his current job as CEO of the insurer’s Aviation Capital Group subsidiary. Tran arrived in the U.S. as a little boy in need of English lessons, which amounted to “a box of crayons and a coloring book in the back of the classroom,” he says. It was a form of cultural immersion, and “because the lessons were in English, I quickly assimilated and was fluent within 6 months.” Look for more from Tran on education in coming weeks, when he’s expected to check in with an OC Leaderboard op-ed … Here’s another fellow who’s come a long way and gotten comfortable in these parts—it’s Mitsubishi Electric US Inc. CEO Kent Hora (left) with Brea Mayor Cecilia Hupp at a recent event to mark the opening of a central kitchen for 85°C Bakery Café. The popular Taiwan-based chain will mix up ingredients for use in all of its 27 stores in the U.S. from the facility, which uses solar panels from Mitsubishi Electric as a main power source … You could hardly find a more comfortable setting for discomforting news than Fariborz Maseeh’s posh Port Theater, the site of the recent unveiling of Edelman Southern California’s annual Trust Barometer. You can see the results of the 2017 Trust Barometer—“trust is in crisis around the world,” the report starts—at Edelman.com. Visit the Port Theater anytime you want to sink into a soft leather chair, stretch your legs, and forget all those troubles by taking in a movie … Sullivan Says: Check Benjie’s and its Avenue K Bar on North Tustin Avenue in Santa Ana for some real delicatessen culture.