HUNTINGTON BEACH – Every day before work, a colleague asks JP Myers: Guess where Huell was last night?

Myers doesn’t watch TV. Never sees Huell Howser’s “California Gold.” So he answers, “Where?”

One reply last fall stunned him.

The grave of Toto. From “The Wizard of Oz.” He’s under some parking lot now in Studio City.

Myers, 48, is a pretty simple guy. Drives blood samples around all day. Listens to talk radio. Goes home, kisses his wife and turns on the computer. Same thing every day.

But that night, he scoured You Tube for Huell Howser’s interview. Sure enough, Toto’s grave had been plowed over in 1958 for the Ventura Freeway. No marker. No plaque. No memorial for one of the most beloved dogs in movie history.

“This is just wrong,” Myers whispered to himself. “We have to fix it.”

But how?

“I’ve pretty much been a loner all my life,” he says, hunched over his laptop in a Huntington Beach Starbucks. “I was a nerd in school.”

So he did what any loner, or any nerd, would do. He opened his laptop and started pecking away …

Who knew he’d cause a national uproar?

TAKE ME OUT TO THE …

Myers is a talk-radio nut. You’d be too if you drove 8 hours a day for 14 years.

A decade ago, he built a fan page for Red Eye Radio host Doug McIntyre.

“I was just a fan,” Myers says, but it felt good to hear his name mentioned on air as webmaster.

Later, he put up some Web pages for Brian Whitman, co-host of The Conway and Whitman Show on KLSX and then …

“Brian Whitman actually came to my birthday party,” Myers says.

In 2008, Myers discovered Facebook and it became more than just a social network. It became his social network. He met Facebook friends at radio listener parties. Started a Facebook lunch bunch.

“I hate it when people say, ‘Oh, you’re on Facebook, that’s not living real life,'” he says. “I’ve probably met 150 people that way and 99 percent have been great people – lawyers, judges, pilots. Smart people.”

One is pop-culture author Chris Epting, whom Myers first met on Facebook and then at a book signing in March, 2010. Epting told of a Laguna Beach man buried 1/8th mile from Angel Stadium without fanfare. Without even a footnote that he’d written “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” one of the seminal songs in American history.

Myers left outraged by this story, but what could a simple deliveryman do?

AND TOTO TOO

A few days later, Myers created the “Jack Norworth Memorial Marker” Facebook page.

Why not? It cost nothing. And maybe he’d find like-minded people who wanted to build a proper memorial for the forgotten songwriter buried at Melrose Abbey Cemetery, in Anaheim.

“It was like this movement,” recalls author Epting, who teamed up on the project. “All of a sudden, we had an event!”

Someone built and donated a 2,000-pound granite monument to Norworth. Someone else covered the cemetery costs. Hall of Fame pitcher Rollie Fingers appeared at the July 11, 2010, dedication.

“It’s a wonderful feeling when you can affect history,” says Epting. “I went back other day and I still get tears in my eyes.”

Myers, too, was grateful to be part of something bigger than himself. A good ride, he figured, but over. Until a few months later – when he heard about Toto.

“This might be another monument project,” he thought.

Myers created a new Facebook page: And he asked Steve Goldstein, the author of “LA Gravesite Companion,” for help.

If you want to know where a celebrity is buried – from Arnold the Pig to Frank Zappa – Goldstein is your man. In fact, he’s the man who told Huell Howser about Toto’s desecrated grave in the first place.

He readily came on board.

“The ‘Wizard of Oz’ was a touchstone of our generation,” Goldstein says. “And without Toto, there’d be no story. Toto sets the whole adventure in motion. And Toto pulls back the curtain to reveal the wizard for who he really is. Everyone loves Toto.”

The project was cruising: $1,000 in donations; 750 friends; mention in the International Wizard of Oz Club’s “Baum Bugle.” Then L.A. Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas voted on whether to accept the Toto memorial marker.

No thanks, they said.

SOMETHING PERMANENT

Toto trivia: He really was a female Cairn Terrier named Terry. She broke her leg during filming, when a Winkie guard stepped on her. She got paid more than the Munchkins.

“Toto is truly one of the favorite stars of the film,” says Mercedes Michalowski, director of the Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas. “A lot of our requests are for Toto displays and gifts.”

Like the International Wizard of Oz Club and like Cairn Terrier Clubs across the country, Michalowski began following Toto’s latest adventure on Myers’ Facebook page. She was relieved to learn that when Calabasas said no, Myers and Goldstein turned to Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Owner Tyler Cassity said yes. Enthusiastically. Then he donated a $100,000 V.I.P. plot near the remains of Johnny Ramone, Rudolph Valentino and Jayne Mansfield. Then he commissioned a bronze sculpture of Toto to crown the monument.

It will be unveiled at 11 a.m., on Sat., June 18, before movie lovers, dog lovers and the offspring of L. Frank Baum, who wrote The Wizard of Oz, and Carl Spitz, who owned and trained Toto. (Rumor has it that a Munchkin will attend, too!)

“To make a dent in history for ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ it’s unbelievable,” says Myers, perched over his laptop. “And it’s permanent. When I’m 80, I can go to Hollywood Forever and this marker is still going to be there. That just blows my mind.”

It shows the power of Facebook. And the power of one man determined to make a difference.

“You like to make a mark in your life,” he says, before heading up the freeway for another eight hours of driving. “For me, this is definitely it.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or tberg@ocregister.com