BONNY DOON, Calif. — Lee Calvert’s new bed room glowed with the dappled daylight of a late-spring afternoon. Simply outdoors her window, she might see hot-pink rhododendron flowers and the stately redwoods of the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Regardless of the sweetness, it was a view — and a life — she was nonetheless adjusting to.
Calvert is 100 years outdated. She’d spent the final six a long time in a little bit home in Pacific Palisades with an ocean view.
She lived alone in Tahitian Terrace, a hillside cell dwelling park the place, till January, she had occupied the identical rented plot on Samoa Method since round 1967. And he or she stored busy — practising desk tennis within the park’s poolside clubhouse, internet hosting meals on her patio overlooking Will Rogers State Seashore, giving speeches about bodily health on the Pacific Palisades Girl’s and Optimist golf equipment.
“I beloved every little thing in regards to the Palisades,” Calvert stated. Regardless of her household’s mild pleas to hitch them right here in Santa Cruz County as she acquired older, she would say: “I’m not leaving paradise.”
“In fact,” she stated, “my intention was to remain there till I’m gone.”
However the universe had different plans. 5 months after her a hundredth birthday, the Palisades fireplace tore by Tahitian Terrace, destroying her double-wide trailer and 156 different properties within the park.
Lee Calvert climbs the steps in her daughter’s dwelling within the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Calvert hugs a good friend after taking part in ping pong on the London Nelson Group Heart in Santa Cruz, Calif.
Calvert walks together with her daughter, Nancy Lingemann, on Lingemann’s property in Bonny Doon.
Now, Calvert is working to rebuild the total, energetic life she led earlier than the hearth — age be damned.
She goes swing dancing on the Santa Cruz Wharf. She takes vigorous hikes in Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park. She is studying pottery. And he or she performs pingpong on the senior heart a couple of occasions per week.
“I don’t need to really feel sorry for myself,” Calvert stated.
Calvert stands about 5 foot 1, has smile strains round her massive blue eyes and retains her strawberry-blond bob neatly curled. The winner of senior badminton and desk tennis competitions around the globe, she is, at her core, an athlete — aggressive, assured and, maybe, a bit headstrong.
On a heat, late Could afternoon, she confirmed off the upstairs condo her daughter and son-in-law mounted up for her on their wooded property in rural Bonny Doon: The fuzzy white mat the place she does 15 push-ups on daily basis. The makeup-strewn vainness desk the place, she stated, “I make myself attractive.”
“It’s fairly a change for me, going from an ocean view to the redwoods,” she stated. “However I’m making the adjustment. Which proves to me that you would be able to be 100 years outdated and alter if it’s a must to.”
The Palisades fireplace on Jan. 7, 2025, destroyed all however one of many 158 cell and prefabricated properties in Tahitian Terrace in Pacific Palisades.
(Zoë Meyers / AFP by way of Getty Photos)
Change got here on Jan. 7.
That morning, Calvert was at dwelling together with her part-time caregiver, who helped her round the home throughout the day. Simply after 10:30 a.m. got here a name from her daughter-in-law, Cheryl Calvert.
Cheryl — who’s married to the son of Lee’s late second husband — has lived in Malibu for some 40 years. She knew excessive winds had been within the forecast, which meant potential energy shutoffs and fireplace. She was driving to select up additional pet food and was close to Pepperdine College when, to the east, she noticed “the tiniest, tiniest piece of smoke.”
She dialed Calvert, who answered with a chipper: “Oh, hello, honey! Are you coming for lunch?”
Cheryl didn’t point out the smoke. Or the newly reported fireplace popping up on her FireWatch app. She requested Calvert to collect a couple of issues — a jacket, some denims, her cellphone — however the centenarian stored chatting cheerfully.
Lee Calvert chats together with her granddaughter, Reyna Lingemann, in Bonny Doon, Calif., in Could.
Cheryl, 68, knew that if she tried to get Calvert herself, she may hit highway closures and gridlock and never make it in time. And he or she figured that if she informed Calvert there was a hearth, she may panic — and never need to rapidly go away her beloved Tahitian Terrace, the place there is just one steep, slim highway out.
So, Cheryl fibbed. She stated she would meet Calvert in Santa Monica for lunch — despite the fact that she was headed again to her own residence, which she apprehensive may burn.
Seize your issues, she pleaded, and have your caregiver drive you. Calvert was in no hurry.
Cheryl stated she began yelling: “Lee, you’re leaving! Get out now!”
“I assumed, ‘This can be a loopy request. However Cheryl is such a very good good friend,’” Calvert stated. “I stated, ‘However! However! However!’ And he or she stated: ‘Do it, Lee.’ She had a firmness in her voice. I stated, ‘OK.’”
Lee Calvert, pictured in an undated photograph in her dwelling in Tahitian Terrace in Pacific Palisades. (Courtesy of Nancy Lingemann)
Lee Calvert stands in the lounge of her daughter’s dwelling in Bonny Doon, Calif., in Could 27.
Calvert moved to Tahitian Terrace round 1967. She was in her early 40s and newly divorced.
She and her ex-husband had lived in a three-bedroom home on Erskine Drive with their son and daughter, who had attended the then-newly constructed Palisades Excessive College.
However after the divorce, cash acquired tight. She rented out the home and paid $5,000 for what would change into her new dwelling — a “darling little cell dwelling,” bought by a household good friend in close by Tahitian Terrace.
Carved into the hillside above Pacific Coast Freeway, Tahitian Terrace had opened in 1962 amid a post-World Battle II increase in cell dwelling parks. Residents owned their homes and rented tiny, ocean-view plots for as little as $200 a month — a jaw-dropping discount, even then.
The park’s founder, Robert E. Westenhaver, scoffed on the phrase “trailer park” and “had excessive beliefs” in regards to the significance of group, Calvert stated.
“He’d say, ‘There’s nothing cell about it. These are properties,’ ” she stated. “I appreciated that.”
Tahitian Terrace had Hawaiian dance classes and artwork courses. Residents would give displays about their work or hobbies. And there was a group room with free espresso — good espresso, Calvert specified — and a way of camaraderie.
It was pretty much as good a touchdown spot as any for a girl who had spent her complete life hustling.
Her household had been plunged into poverty after the 1929 inventory market crash. She was 5 years outdated on the time. They lived within the Mission District in San Francisco, and her father misplaced his job hand-painting the striping on Cadillac vehicles. The household moved to Los Angeles, hoping he might discover work.
Unable to afford lease throughout the Nice Despair, they bounced from dwelling to dwelling.
A portray of a younger Lee Calvert in her daughter’s dwelling.
Throughout a stint in Studio Metropolis, “Mom had some rabbits she would kill for our suppers and prepare dinner over an open fireplace [and] she had my brother go behind the native market and attempt to rescue some greens that had been thrown out on the finish of the day,” Calvert wrote in a six-page autobiography. “I knew we had been in hassle and at all times hungry. I acquired sick — no sanitation.”
She and her youthful sister attended free appearing and dance courses taught by out-of-work artists by the federal Works Progress Administration. As a young person, she landed theater appearing gigs, making $60 per week — greater than her father.
And after the U.S. entered World Battle II, she volunteered as a USO lady, dancing with younger troopers on the Santa Monica Pier, she stated, “earlier than they went abroad to God is aware of what.”
“Once I was younger,” she stated, “ I used to be not precisely ugly.”
Calvert, who’s studying pottery, holds one of many vases she is making for individuals who helped her after the hearth.
Calvert makes pottery together with her daughter, Nancy Lingemann, and son-in-law, John Lingemann, on Could 27, 2025, in Bonny Doon, Calif.
Between reveals and dances, she wrote letters to her older brother, Gene M. Hirsch, a second lieutenant within the U.S. Military Air Forces who had at all times regarded out for her and stored her laughing throughout their troublesome upbringing.
On Sept. 11, 1942, Hirsch, age 24, and 9 different troopers stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Pressure Base close to Tuscon had been in a B-24 Liberator on the return leg of a coaching flight to Nebraska. Amid unhealthy climate, their airplane crashed right into a mountain in jap Arizona. All of them died.
Calvert stored the letters from her brother — which she nonetheless pulled out to learn, simply to really feel near him — in a lockbox in her closet.
Portraits of 100-year-old Lee Calvert dangle amongst household pictures on the partitions of her daughter’s dwelling.
Simply after Calvert moved to Tahitian Terrace, the park’s proprietor requested many of the residents to briefly transfer their trailers throughout the development of the adjoining Temescal Canyon Highway.
The Occasions reported in 1968 that Palisades residents regarded Temescal as “an escape route which can permit them to get into the group if landslides block the coast freeway.”
Calvert — who would change into Tahitian Terrace’s longest-term resident — pleaded for particular permission to remain, regardless of the near-constant development noise.
She labored from dwelling and had her personal enterprise, creating TV and film continuity scripts, which meticulously element dialogue, sound results, music and scene descriptions within the order they seem on display screen.
The work required silence and focus. So she flipped her schedule.
“I slept throughout the day, once I might,” Calvert stated. “It was quite a lot of noise and scraping equipment. So I labored at night time. I needed to rescue the enterprise, as a result of in any other case I wasn’t going to make it.”
Images of Lee Calvert dangle on the partitions of her daughter’s dwelling.
Calvert did make it, although, and stored working till she was 88. Among the many reveals for which she did continuity scripts: “The Lucy Present,” “Laverne & Shirley,” “Cheers,” “Star Trek,” “The Good Spouse” and “NCIS.”
In 1968, she married once more, this time to Larry Calvert — a World Battle II veteran and aeronautical engineer. He was a fellow badminton participant who inspired her to journey the world competing within the sport, for which she earned greater than 200 medals and induction into the USA Badminton Corridor of Fame.
They constructed a cheerful life collectively at Tahitian Terrace for 31 years. Larry died in 1999.
In August 2024, Calvert turned 100. Neighbors and her household threw two massive events at Tahitian Terrace, the place the clubhouse was adorned in her favourite shade, royal blue.
She wore figure-flattering clothes that confirmed off her toned legs. She danced the tango together with her son-in-law, John Lingemann, who joked that she was “a hundred-year-old hottie.” And he or she did 15 push-ups whereas her buddies and neighbors cheered.
On Jan. 7, Lee and her caregiver calmly drove out of Tahitian Terrace simply earlier than 11 a.m., headed to lunch in Santa Monica. Pacific Coast Freeway had but to change into gridlocked with individuals fleeing the fast-moving flames.
Cheryl knew she wasn’t going to hitch them. She feared her own residence in Malibu was at risk. So she requested a good friend from Van Nuys to fulfill the ladies on the now-closed Earth, Wind and Flour Italian restaurant.
“Simply have lunch,” Cheryl requested her good friend. “Discuss nothing. Simply be — completely happy.”
The ladies had a nice meal, chatting about Calvert’s badminton days. Calvert’s daughter, Nancy Lingemann, booked her a resort by the ocean in Santa Monica.
The view from the cleared dwelling web site of 100-year-old Lee Calvert.
“Getting her out of the Palisades — that was the best triumph of my life,” Cheryl stated.
Flames entered Tahitian Terrace by 4:30 p.m. Inside two hours, the complicated was gone.
Three weeks after the hearth, Cheryl pleaded with a Nationwide Guard soldier to let her previous the barricades into Pacific Palisades. She parked at an empty Vons off Sundown Boulevard, walked a mile and a half alongside the closed Pacific Coast Freeway — previous army vehicles and police vehicles — and up the hill to Tahitian Terrace.
She discovered Calvert’s lockbox. Every thing in it — together with letters from her brother and husband — had burned.
“I informed her, ‘They’re in your reminiscence. You’ll always remember,’” Cheryl stated, her voice cracking.
Cheryl informed her: “Lee, you’re an optimist. And optimists at all times look forward.”
Calvert now lives together with her daughter and son-in-law within the Santa Cruz Mountains. The hillside property has plenty of stairs. Calvert says they are going to hold her in form.
Calvert has not been again to Tahitian Terrace. She doesn’t know when, or if, she is going to ever be prepared.
It’s unclear if the cell dwelling park shall be rebuilt. It has lengthy been owned by a small, family-run firm that makes little revenue off its rent-controlled plots. In a March letter to residents, the park’s house owners wrote that if Tahitian Terrace is rebuilt, the method “might take a few years.”
Quickly after the hearth, Calvert moved in together with her daughter, Nancy, 78, and son-in-law, John, 81.
They reside so deep within the redwood forest that, for years, they’ve hung paper plates with hand-drawn arrows to fence posts to guarantee friends they’re nonetheless on the appropriate path.
Calvert, strolling together with her son-in-law, John Lingemann, is now surrounded by her kids, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in addition to new buddies, in rural Bonny Doon, Calif.
Theirs is a hilly 29-acre property, crammed with vegetable gardens, citrus and avocado timber and the flowers Nancy grows for her enterprise making wedding ceremony floral preparations.
Calvert, who had a couple of falls in recent times, climbs the hills in orthopedic tennis sneakers. She makes use of a cane at her daughter’s urging. And generally leaves it behind on goal.
“I’m extra cautious now,” Calvert stated, grinning. “I’ve by no means identified something about being cautious. However I’ve discovered.”
For Mom’s Day, Nancy stunned her with a big framed portrait of her brother, Gene, in his army uniform. Calvert thought all her pictures had burned — however Nancy had made digital copies earlier than the a hundredth party.
It sits on the vainness desk in her new condo subsequent to Nancy and John’s home. Throughout the room dangle a number of medals. The Huntsman World Senior Video games — upon studying a lot of her badminton and desk tennis medals burned — despatched a number of replacements.
“I may very well be devastated, dropping a lot,” Calvert stated on a latest afternoon. “I imply, I misplaced treasures that I needed to offer to my great-grandchildren. I needed to offer them little issues I had that I assumed had been necessary.”
Nancy gently interjected, placing her arm round her: “However you realize, Mother, these issues should not that necessary. They love you for who you’re.”
“Effectively, they’ll simply have to do this, received’t they?” she stated, laughing. “I don’t have a selection anymore.”
Calvert performs doubles ping pong with Melody Luan on the London Nelson Group Heart in Santa Cruz on Could 28, 2025.
On a latest Wednesday afternoon, Calvert posted up at a pingpong desk on the London Nelson Group Heart in downtown Santa Cruz for a recreation of senior doubles.
“I don’t need you to take it simple,” she informed Perry Brown, her competitor throughout the desk. “I can solely sustain my recreation if I push myself.”
Calvert, a lefty, had a steely-eyed recreation face, grinning solely when she scored a degree or stopped an opponent’s serve.
Afterward, Brown, a 62-year-old retired contractor with muscled arms and a tank prime, informed her she performed nicely and that he had been stunned to be taught her age.
Calvert jokingly flirted.
“I might take him dwelling, however they received’t let me,” she deadpanned. “Individuals would discuss.”
Lee Calvert and her daughter, Nancy Lingemann, take a stroll by Lingemann’s wooded property in rural Bonny Doon, Calif.
Calvert was speeding with Nancy to a great-granddaughter’s elementary college commencement. However she promised she can be again for extra pingpong. Enhancing her recreation — and preserving busy — is giving her causes to look forward on this life after the hearth.
“I feel that’s a secret to a very good life: You must adapt to no matter occurs,” she stated. “Doesn’t imply you’re at all times going to love it. However you possibly can attempt to prefer it. You get by these issues — and also you search for the following good factor.”
