Ft. Bragg--2 Women Are the Right Stuff

Since the 1940s the two women have been the mainstays of this quaint, isolated Northern California coastal town, an hour’s drive from the nearest four-lane highway. One, a radio announcer, is the sounding board, and often the conscience, of the community. The other has headed up Paul Bunyan Days, Ft. Bragg’s biggest annual event, since its inception on her ranch half a century ago, and keeps it going by sheer force of will.

Both women are up in their years. Gertrude White, the rancher, is a lively 95. She looks and acts years younger. Eloise Keller, the radio announcer, known affectionately by townspeople as Aunt Elly, chooses not to tell her age.

“Because of its isolation, Ft. Bragg has many traditional aspects no longer found in many other towns as America changes,” noted Brooks Mencher, 33, editor of the weekly Ft. Bragg Advocate-News. The newspaper, like the town, is 100 years old.

“Eloise Keller and Gertrude White,” Mencher added, “are prime examples of the unique flavor of our small community.”

Aldo (Moose) Mattiuzzo, 59, lifelong logger who is 6 feet 4 and weighs 380 pounds, observed that “most of the town grew up with these two ladies. Everybody goes to Gertrude for advice and everybody calls Elly when she’s on the air and talks about anything they want to talk about.”

Mattiuzzo’s sentiments are echoed throughout Ft. Bragg, population 5,500, a place where fishing and a sawmill are the two biggest enterprises and the downtown business section is turn-of-the-century, one- and two-story frame buildings jammed together.

For 40 years Aunt Elly has been on the air five days a week over KDAC, Ft. Bragg’s AM station where ads go for $15 a minute and 12,000 listeners tune in for 50 miles up and down the coast.

“Some days I feel 105. Other days I feel 35,” said the tiny, bent-over, gray-haired radio personality. She doesn’t sound a day over 35 on the air.

“I don’t know Elly’s age. When I bought KDAC in 1960 she came with the station,” said KDAC’s owner, Charlie Stone, 66. The Art Deco radio building on a hill overlooking town has two Flash Gordon lightning bolts painted over its entrance.

Eloise Keller has an hour-long talk show every morning at 9 and a half-hour interview show at 5:30 in the afternoon. When people call in they never give their names, but Elly knows most of them anyway by their voices. She never gets rattled, feels everybody is entitled to an opinion. Callers phone in to discuss everything from recipes to international affairs.

On a recent morning a woman with parakeets tweeting in the background called about caring for the less fortunate. “Her parakeets always chirp along with her,” said Keller. A logger called from a pay phone. Traffic could be heard in the background.

A retired teacher phoned to talk about El Salvador and the president of the local Republican Women’s Club called to talk about communism.

“Elly,” said the Republican lady, “Don’t ever forget: When shrimps learn to whistle, communism will die.”.

“Elly has touched the lives of everyone around here,” said the radio station owner. “She has campaigned for more things in this town. When Ft. Bragg needed a new hospital, Elly went on the air and campaigned for the hospital until we got it. When the Fire Department needed a new ladder truck, it was Elly who led the drive to get it. The fire chief drove out to the station to give her the first ride in the truck.”

A wall at the radio station is filled with plaques honoring Keller, one from every organization in town, several statewide awards for special radio programs she produced. For years she read children’s stories over the air. That’s when they started calling her Aunt Elly.

She had never broadcast anything in her life when she called KDAC in 1949 to compliment the station for a women’s program it aired shortly after she moved here from Los Angeles.

“Paul Singer was manager of the station at the time. He told me the lady doing the show devoted to women’s issues had left the station that day and he was looking for someone to take her place. He told me he liked my voice and asked if I would do it. That was on a Friday. I went to work for the station on Monday and I have been here ever since,” Keller recalled.

For 60 years Gertrude White has been caring for dairy and beef cattle (20 head of beef cattle at present) on her 70-acre ranch. For 50 years she has operated a riding stable and taught horsemanship. She has a stubborn streak. She won’t let anyone take her picture.

White rode a horse every year in the Paul Bunyan Days parade, the popular event she started, until she was 90. The horse she owned at the time died and she did not get another one. She has been riding on the fire truck in the parade ever since.

All through the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, Ft. Bragg received most of its milk from the dairy owned and operated by this hearty ranch woman. She has led and been the cook and chief bottle washer on an annual three-day trail ride sponsored by her riding club for the last 50 years.

She shows up at almost every function in town, especially when there is a dance. “I’m considered the best dancer in Ft. Bragg and there are a lot of good dancers here,” she said with a laugh.

“I do as I damn well please and I have no intention of slowing down,” she said. She has been a widow for years. She told of owning 24 cars in her lifetime, the first an Overland in 1912. He last six have been Cadillacs.

“My present car is a 1976 Cadillac with 28,000 miles. The original tires are still on it. I think I will keep it for a while. I haven’t had a ticket or an accident in my life. I took my driver’s license test (again) last year and my license was renewed for four years,” White said. She lives by herself in a weather-beaten old farmhouse overlooking the sea.