UCSB Graduate Makes an Art of Living

Last weekend, when Lucia Alice Warren, 85, left Friendship Manor, the retirement home where she lives in Goleta, for commencement ceremonies nearby at UCSB’s College of Creative Studies, it was not to applaud the accomplishments of some young relative two or three generations behind her. She was the one receiving the BA degree in literature, thus becoming the oldest person ever to graduate from the UCSB campus.

It all started four years ago when Warren, an artist with a lifetime of professional accomplishments behind her, applied unsuccessfully for two teaching positions in art at adult education centers.

As she recalled several days ago, both times the centers were ready to sign her up and asked: “You do have a degree don’t you?” almost as an afterthought. She did not. She had never even graduated from high school.

“When I heard that for the second time,” she said, laughing, “I decided , ‘I’ll go and get one even if it is this late in the day.’ ”

She had, she said, always wanted to study literature anyhow, and had learned that she scored very highly on word aptitude. She went to Santa Barbara City College for two years, graduated and transferred to UCSB.

Not a surprising decision for one with as busy and varied a life as she. Raised in Massachusetts, where she studied art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the early ‘20s, she worked there as a portrait painter. She came west, on her way to New Zealand where she planned to go hiking, but arrived in Los Angeles “just in time for Pearl Harbor.”

She lived in the San Fernando Valley and worked during the war as a technical illustrator at Lockheed. Later, during the Korean War, she did the same type of work for McDonnell Aircraft and stayed on long enough, she said, for the fun of seeing the form taking shape for the first rocket to the moon. And painted portraits. And made small attempts at acting.

Now that the degree is behind her?

“I have a whole gallery of paintings in mind. I’ve done the sketches already. It’ll take about a year. As far as writing goes, I’ve found I’m a better talker than writer. I’m waiting for a computer to come along that I can talk to and then edit. I’ll do my autobiography first, for some of the young people in my family. And I’ve crossed the country 14 times by myself. I’d like to write about that.”

She never did make it to New Zealand. That is one thing not in her plans. The trail she wanted to hike on now has a highway going through it.

“And besides, I have to admit I wouldn’t be up to anything quite so rigorous at my age.”

Love in Divorce Court

Something old, something new? No. Mary Anne Sterling and Robert Michael Houlahan wanted to keep it simple. They decided on a simple courthouse wedding--and discovered that “no frills” does not necessarily mean simple.

As Mary Anne tells it, she called the Torrance courthouse only to get a recorded message that informed her they would have to be married downtown. Still disappointed when she and her fiance went to the Torrance courthouse for the license, she asked again in person. Why no, the clerk told them. They could be married in Torrance, right upstairs on the fifth floor where divorce court was held. Between cases the judges would take them. For free, as opposed to a $15 fee downtown.

And so it was that on the morning of May 31, the newlyweds-to-be arrived at the fifth-floor courtroom, and to their dismay waited while two particularly ugly divorce cases were heard.

The judge called the shaken couple forward and was in a jovial mood, Mary Anne reports, doing it up properly, “the-groom-may-kiss-the-bride” and all of that.

The ceremony completed, he announced to the room, “Now let’s have a round of applause for Mary Anne and Robert Michael.”

“The court was filled with divorcing couples,” Mary Anne said. “No one clapped. So the judge pleaded: ‘Can’t I have a little encouragement? This couple just got married.’ At that everybody started laughing and applauded.”

Other than the fact that the camera jammed, the ceremony concluded without further incident. As they left the room, the judge had one final directive for them.

“Now get out of here and don’t come back.”

Tournament for Jaime

Last year, just months after her 16-year-old daughter Jaime died, Jill Slavin organized a golf tournament in her daughter’s memory. Any money raised would go for medical research on Reye’s syndrome, the rare viral disease that had taken her daughter and that mainly afflicts young people, affecting the brain and liver.

“I did it because of the loss,” she said recently. “But it was so successful--we raised more than $30,000--that it’s now annual.”

On Monday, the second annual Jaime Beth Slavin Celebrity Golf Tournament, hosted by McLean Stevenson and Harvey Korman will take place at El Caballero Country Club in Tarzana. Stevenson and Korman are family friends who knew Jaime well, Jill Slavin said. Fellow celebrities, including Jack Lemmon, Dennis James, Scatman Crothers, Bubba Smith, Fred De Cordova, Johnny Mann and Jerry Vale have already signed up to play that day.

“My living room and dining room are filled with gifts that have been donated,” Slavin said. “We’ll have fabulous prizes.”

The tournament will get under way with an 11 a.m. lunch at the club, a putting contest and a “shotgun scramble” for the tournament. Afterward, players, joined by their spouses or other guests, will stay on for a dance and entertainment.

“I’m doing it mostly to keep her memory alive,” she said. “I’m doing it for her. And of course it raises money for the research on the disease.”

The fee for entering the tournament is $300, which covers lunch and the dinner dance at which each player may bring one guest. Anyone wishing to sign up may call Jill Slavin at (818) 987-1680.

Skid Row Men’s Place

On Wednesday Frank Rice and Mollie Lowery officially opened the L.A. Men’s Place for chronically mentally ill male residents of Skid Row. On that day they also held an open house at the facility, a renovated medical clinic at 627 S. San Julian.

Rice, a former Bullock’s executive who founded the center and is its board chairman, reported the response was tremendous: “I didn’t know I had so many close friends.” About 60 people stopped by to wish him and Lowery, the director, well, among them other providers of services on Skid Row, including staff from the County Mental Health Dept. with whom they hope to work reciprocally.

The center, which opened to clients the next day, will operate seven days a week from “about 9 to 5,” Rice said. “It will be known as a place where there will be no waiting in the street, where you don’t have to register or sign anything. There’ll be a meal served at noon, cots, bathrooms and showers, and shelves where people can put their belongings. But they can’t leave stuff there overnight. There’s a laundry--washer and dryer, and we’ll have clothes on hand, in fact we could use more.”

Other than clothes, Rice was conservative about what the Men’s Place was asking from the community just now.

“We’ll be looking for volunteers, we’ll need donations for operating costs, we’ll probably need a lot. But until we have more experience, we’ll wait. Let’s just say right now there’s a lot of creative thinking going on. We’re received some great offers already.”

Those interested in learning more about the center may call during the day at (213) 488-0031.