In New Career, Woman Shields Open Space Her Mother Taught Her to Love

As the years passed, Patricia Jones kept remembering the word pictures her mother painted for her as a little girl. “Look at that beautiful sunset,” her mother would say. “Oh, isn’t that a beautiful view. Look at the birds.”

Finally, after raising a family, spending uneventful years as a secretary, a divorce and then five years of schooling at Cal State Long Beach to prepare for a midlife career change, Jones, 52, is out there trying to protect what her mother so vividly described.

Born in Los Angeles but raised near the ocean, Jones is fond of the environment and regrets the loss of open space in the Southland. “There’s not near as much left from when I first grew up in this area,” she said.

So, armed with a college education, Jones joined the military--sort of--to help save some of the open space and wildlife in Orange County.

Jones, of Sunset Beach, got a job at the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach, where she is charged with guarding a 1,100-acre Anaheim Bay National Wildlife Refuge within the base boundaries.

“Military bases provide nearly the only unspoiled land left in Southern California,” she said. The refuge is one of the largest remaining coastal open space areas in the Southland along the Pacific Flyway of migratory birds.

She’s doing such a good job that she received the Secretary of the Navy’s Natural Resources Conservation Award. And earlier, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service honored her with a “special achievement” certificate for protecting endangered birds on the station.

“There’s a lot of interest in the refuge,” she said. “We have a lot of people who want to come in and look at it.”

Jones also said the people interested in the refuge, and in open space in general, are “a lot like me--they want to keep the environment the way it is.”

Jones has backed many environment protection programs by carrying petitions aimed at creating laws to protect the environment.

“I’m working within the professional field, so I don’t want to be part of the radical type,” she said. “I know how the laws work and how laws can work for the environment.”

And now Jones is after the oil industry. “More and more I’m into environmental protection and enjoy working in oil field containment and cleanup,” she said, noting that there is an immediate challenge to stop oil spills on land and in the ocean.

Part of her drive to protect the ocean from oil comes from an unrealized dream of becoming a marine biologist, she said, and an enjoyment of body surfing.

“I grew up by the ocean and I know its beauty and strength,” she said. “The ocean gives you a feeling of power. And it has soul.”

Those crafty folks at the OASIS Senior Citizens Center in Corona del Mar publish an informative newsletter. Judy O’Shaughnessy, the supervisor there, sent along this excerpted “Profile of a Senior.”

- A senior Citizen is one who was here before the pill, pantyhose and Boy George.

- In our day, grass was for mowing, pot was something you cooked in and Coke was a refreshing drink.

- If we’d been asked to explain CIA, Ms., NATO, UFO, NFL, ERA or HUD, we would have said alphabet soup.

- We were before Ann Landers, plastic and yogurt, and we got married first and then lived together. Bunnies were small rabbits.

- And closets were for clothes, not for coming out of.

Retired minister Richard Beal, living in San Juan Capistrano with his daughter, Margaret, and son-in-law, Ridgely Ryan, turned 100 on Dec. 10. “When I walked in to congratulate him,” Ridgely Ryan said, “I asked how he felt.”

Beal’s answer? “I’m 100%.” Of course.

Ingrid Andrews posed this question to her students at St. Margaret’s preschool in San Juan Capistrano:

What if Santa’s reindeer flew away while he was inside your house?

“He’d just spend the night,” said Brad Lyman.

“He’d take the Santa Claus Express,” said Kevin Gregg.

“He’d call the police,” said Brittany Masters.

“He’d get on blue shoes and hop back up,” said Dante Siracusa.

“He’d just walk to the next house,” said Brick Foss.

Acknowledgments--Millie Roehrick of Garden Grove, Richard Knutzen of Fountain Valley and Robert Rhey of Anaheim were presented the Bronze Pelican Award from the Orange County Catholic Committee on Scouting in recognition of their years of volunteer work in the Boy Scout program.