Laguna Beach Woman, 88, Recalls Her Life’s Adventures and Gives Her Cat Some Credit

If anyone needed her life’s story written, it must be Beatrice Whittlesey, a hallmark example of what exercise, nutrition and a positive mental outlook can do. Of course, said Whittlesey, 88, it helped that she never married and always had a cat for company.

“I haven’t given up, but I’m slowing down,” she remarked, while pacing on a walking machine on the patio of her Laguna Beach home overlooking the ocean. “I don’t mind growing old as long as I can be useful.” Later she rode her stationary bicycle.

Relatives urged Whittlesey, who wasn’t crazy about the idea, to put in writing what she had experienced over the years. It was a frightening thought to her. “I realize I have had somewhat of an eventful life,” she said, “but I lost a lot of sleep when I knew the book people were coming to ask me questions.”

After recording her life experiences with Royal Literary Publications of Laguna Beach, she rightly named the book “Life’s Fulfillment.” Only 100 were printed. Most were given to relatives although six are in the public libraries in Laguna Beach, the community where she has spent most of her life and where she designed and built her home in 1926.

She had nine other houses constructed there; she acted as contractor for all of them when she wasn’t traveling.

Whittlesey, a retired physical education teacher who saved her money to build the homes, just made plans for a trip with a tour group to New Zealand, a change from the past when she traveled alone throughout the world.

Those trips included a six-week cruise down the Amazon with natives, a canoe trip on the Missouri River and rafting down the Colorado River. The paths of her worldwide travels are shown with lines of yarn stretched across a global map in her living room.

The last five years she has traveled to the Soviet Union and South Africa. “I’ve been all over the world, including a trip to the Galapagos Islands on an Ecuadorean battleship,” she said, and now is repeating some trips, such as to New Zealand. In writing the book, Whittlesey said she acquired good health through exercise, “carloads of vitamins,” a philosophy to triumph and “an inner guidance” for important decisions.

Her current project is to help find a solution to the Southern California water problem. She feels a desalination plant powered by solar energy should be built off the Camp Pendleton coast. Her own home is solar-powered.

And just to maintain her mobility, she recently underwent lens transplants in both eyes to keep her driving license.

In April, Robert Purzycki, 36, of Cypress, shot a hole in one on the 12th hole at Los Alamitos Country Club. His mother, Ethel Purzycki, 65, of Cypress, just shot a hole in one on the same hole.

Like son, like mother.

How do you improve relations between the Soviet Union and the United States? Send bright young students to interchange thoughts with Russian students and citizens, said Chapman College professor Dudley L. Weeks, of Orange, who will take 25 of his best students on a three-week trip there in January.

“The students and I will raise the money for the trip,” said Weeks, who noted that 17 of the students work and are helping pay their own way through college. “All were selected on ability, rather than need.”

He said that it will cost $50,000 for the trip and that the group would appreciate tax-deductible donations from individuals and business.

Off and on for five years, jeweler Victor Alegria, 28, of La Habra has been spending his time gilding a 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II in pure gold and now has a car appraised at $150,000. Not bad considering the car is scaled down to 1/24th of the original car’s size.

“What I really want is someone to buy it and show it, possibly in a museum,” said Alegria. He keeps the car in a bank vault since it’s made of two pounds of solid gold. “It’s a one of a kind.”

Sure enough. It has diamonds for headlights and rubies for taillights; the bumpers, grill and wheel spokes are made of white gold as are the seats. And for some added class, there are diamonds in the steering wheel. For reality, the tires are made of rubber.

“I’ve got $15,000 of actual cash in the car,” he said, “but I’ve spent five years making it and that’s the investment.”

Alegria’s had a couple of offers, “but they weren’t enough.” One person wanted to trade a real Rolls-Royce.