BONNY DOON, Calif. — Lee Calvert’s new bed room glowed with the dappled daylight of a late-spring afternoon. Simply exterior her window, she may 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 previous. She’d spent the final six a long time in just a little 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 Manner since round 1967. And she or he saved busy — training desk tennis within the park’s poolside clubhouse, internet hosting meals on her patio overlooking Will Rogers State Seaside, giving speeches about bodily health on the Pacific Palisades Lady’s and Optimist golf equipment.
“I beloved all the things in regards to the Palisades,” Calvert mentioned. Regardless of her household’s mild pleas to hitch them right here in Santa Cruz County as she obtained older, she would say: “I’m not leaving paradise.”
“After all,” she mentioned, “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 means of Tahitian Terrace, destroying her double-wide trailer and 156 different houses within the park.
Lee Calvert climbs the steps in her daughter’s dwelling within the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Calvert hugs a pal after enjoying 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 complete, energetic life she led earlier than the fireplace — 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 she or he performs pingpong on the senior middle a couple of occasions per week.
“I don’t wish to really feel sorry for myself,” Calvert mentioned.
Calvert stands about 5 foot 1, has smile strains round her huge 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 house her daughter and son-in-law fastened up for her on their wooded property in rural Bonny Doon: The fuzzy white mat the place she does 15 push-ups day-after-day. The makeup-strewn self-importance desk the place, she mentioned, “I make myself attractive.”
“It’s fairly a change for me, going from an ocean view to the redwoods,” she mentioned. “However I’m making the adjustment. Which proves to me that you would be able to be 100 years previous and alter if you need to.”
The Palisades fireplace on Jan. 7, 2025, destroyed all however one of many 158 cell and prefabricated houses in Tahitian Terrace in Pacific Palisades.
(Zoë Meyers / AFP by way of Getty Photographs)
Change got here on Jan. 7.
That morning, Calvert was at dwelling together with her part-time caregiver, who helped her round the home through 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 doable energy shutoffs and fireplace. She was driving to choose 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 saved 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 street closures and gridlock and never make it in time. And she or he figured that if she advised Calvert there was a fireplace, she may panic — and never wish to shortly depart her beloved Tahitian Terrace, the place there is just one steep, slim street out.
So, Cheryl fibbed. She mentioned she would meet Calvert in Santa Monica for lunch — regardless that she was headed again to her own residence, which she frightened may burn.
Seize your issues, she pleaded, and have your caregiver drive you. Calvert was in no hurry.
Cheryl mentioned she began yelling: “Lee, you’re leaving! Get out now!”
“I assumed, ‘This can be a loopy request. However Cheryl is such a superb pal,’” Calvert mentioned. “I mentioned, ‘However! However! However!’ And she or he mentioned: ‘Do it, Lee.’ She had a firmness in her voice. I mentioned, ‘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 obtained tight. She rented out the home and paid $5,000 for what would develop into her new dwelling — a “darling little cell dwelling,” bought by a household pal in close by Tahitian Terrace.
Carved into the hillside above Pacific Coast Freeway, Tahitian Terrace had opened in 1962 amid a post-World Warfare II growth in cell dwelling parks. Residents owned their homes and rented tiny, ocean-view plots for as little as $200 a month — a jaw-dropping cut price, 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 neighborhood, Calvert mentioned.
“He’d say, ‘There’s nothing cell about it. These are houses,’ ” she mentioned. “I favored that.”
Tahitian Terrace had Hawaiian dance classes and artwork lessons. Residents would give shows about their work or hobbies. And there was a neighborhood 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 entire life hustling.
Her household had been plunged into poverty after the 1929 inventory market crash. She was 5 years previous on the time. They lived within the Mission District in San Francisco, and her father misplaced his job hand-painting the striping on Cadillac automobiles. The household moved to Los Angeles, hoping he may discover work.
Unable to afford lease through 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 cook 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 bother and all the time hungry. I obtained sick — no sanitation.”
She and her youthful sister attended free performing and dance lessons taught by out-of-work artists by means of the federal Works Progress Administration. As a youngster, she landed theater performing gigs, making $60 per week — greater than her father.
And after the U.S. entered World Warfare II, she volunteered as a USO woman, dancing with younger troopers on the Santa Monica Pier, she mentioned, “earlier than they went abroad to God is aware of what.”
“After I was younger,” she mentioned, “ 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 fireplace.
Calvert makes pottery together with her daughter, Nancy Lingemann, and son-in-law, John Lingemann, on Could 27, 2025, in Bonny Doon, Calif.
Between exhibits and dances, she wrote letters to her older brother, Gene M. Hirsch, a second lieutenant within the U.S. Military Air Forces who had all the time regarded out for her and saved her laughing throughout their tough upbringing.
On Sept. 11, 1942, Hirsch, age 24, and 9 different troopers stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Drive Base close to Tuscon had been in a B-24 Liberator on the return leg of a coaching flight to Nebraska. Amid dangerous climate, their aircraft crashed right into a mountain in jap Arizona. All of them died.
Calvert saved 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 hold amongst household images 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 through the development of the adjoining Temescal Canyon Highway.
The Instances reported in 1968 that Palisades residents regarded Temescal as “an escape route which can enable them to get into the neighborhood if landslides block the coast freeway.”
Calvert — who would develop 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.
The work required silence and focus. So she flipped her schedule.
“I slept through the day, after I may,” Calvert mentioned. “It was a variety of noise and scraping equipment. So I labored at evening. 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 hold on the partitions of her daughter’s dwelling.
Calvert did make it, although, and saved working till she was 88. Among the many exhibits 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 Warfare 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 contented life collectively at Tahitian Terrace for 31 years. Larry died in 1999.
In August 2024, Calvert turned 100. Neighbors and her household threw two huge events at Tahitian Terrace, the place the clubhouse was embellished in her favourite shade, royal blue.
She wore figure-flattering attire 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 she or he did 15 push-ups whereas her associates 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 develop 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 pal from Van Nuys to satisfy the ladies on the now-closed Earth, Wind and Flour Italian restaurant.
“Simply have lunch,” Cheryl requested her pal. “Speak about nothing. Simply be — glad.”
The ladies had a pleasing meal, chatting about Calvert’s badminton days. Calvert’s daughter, Nancy Lingemann, booked her a lodge by the ocean in Santa Monica.
The view from the cleared dwelling website of 100-year-old Lee Calvert.
“Getting her out of the Palisades — that was the best triumph of my life,” Cheryl mentioned.
Flames entered Tahitian Terrace by 4:30 p.m. Inside two hours, the complicated was gone.
Three weeks after the fireplace, 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 navy vehicles and police automobiles — and up the hill to Tahitian Terrace.
She discovered Calvert’s lockbox. The whole lot in it — together with letters from her brother and husband — had burned.
“I advised her, ‘They’re in your reminiscence. You’ll always remember,’” Cheryl mentioned, her voice cracking.
Cheryl advised her: “Lee, you’re an optimist. And optimists all the time look forward.”
Calvert now lives together with her daughter and son-in-law within the Santa Cruz Mountains. The hillside property has a lot of stairs. Calvert says they may maintain her in form.
Calvert has not been again to Tahitian Terrace. She doesn’t know when, or if, she’s going to ever be prepared.
It’s unclear if the cell dwelling park will probably 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 homeowners wrote that if Tahitian Terrace is rebuilt, the method “may take a few years.”
Quickly after the fireplace, Calvert moved in together with her daughter, Nancy, 78, and son-in-law, John, 81.
They stay 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 precise 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 associates, in rural Bonny Doon, Calif.
Theirs is a hilly 29-acre property, stuffed with vegetable gardens, citrus and avocado timber and the flowers Nancy grows for her enterprise making marriage ceremony floral preparations.
Calvert, who had a couple of falls in recent times, climbs the hills in orthopedic tennis footwear. She makes use of a cane at her daughter’s urging. And generally leaves it behind on function.
“I’m extra cautious now,” Calvert mentioned, grinning. “I’ve by no means identified something about being cautious. However I’ve realized.”
For Mom’s Day, Nancy stunned her with a big framed portrait of her brother, Gene, in his navy uniform. Calvert thought all her images had burned — however Nancy had made digital copies earlier than the a hundredth party.
It sits on the self-importance desk in her new house subsequent to Nancy and John’s home. Throughout the room hold a number of medals. The Huntsman World Senior Video games — upon studying lots of her badminton and desk tennis medals burned — despatched a number of replacements.
“I could possibly be devastated, dropping a lot,” Calvert mentioned on a latest afternoon. “I imply, I misplaced treasures that I needed to present to my great-grandchildren. I needed to present them little issues I had that I assumed had been essential.”
Nancy gently interjected, placing her arm round her: “However you already know, Mother, these issues should not that essential. They love you for who you’re.”
“Effectively, they’ll simply have to do this, received’t they?” she mentioned, 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 advised 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 some extent or stopped an opponent’s serve.
Afterward, Brown, a 62-year-old retired contractor with muscled arms and a tank prime, advised her she performed nicely and that he had been stunned to study her age.
Calvert jokingly flirted.
“I may take him dwelling, however they received’t let me,” she deadpanned. “Individuals would speak.”
Lee Calvert and her daughter, Nancy Lingemann, take a stroll by means of Lingemann’s wooded property in rural Bonny Doon, Calif.
Calvert was speeding with Nancy to a great-granddaughter’s elementary faculty commencement. However she promised she could be again for extra pingpong. Enhancing her recreation — and maintaining busy — is giving her causes to look forward on this life after the fireplace.
“I believe that’s a secret to a superb life: It’s important to adapt to no matter occurs,” she mentioned. “Doesn’t imply you’re all the time going to love it. However you possibly can attempt to prefer it. You get by means of these issues — and also you search for the following good factor.”
