Countywide : Grandma’s Big Day Is Coming Up

As a holiday, Grandparents Day doesn’t generate the excitement of Christmas, a day off on Labor Day or fireworks on the Fourth of July.

None of that bothers 87-year-old Terry Blake of Newport Beach, because every time she sees Grandparents Day on the calendar, she gets a bit of thrill. She is founder of the holiday.

“I wish Hallmark would recognize that and thank me and all those card-makers,” Blake said with a grin as she curled up with her miniature poodle, Joy.

Known around the world as the “Glamorous Grandmother,” Blake campaigned for more than 20 years before winning national recognition for Grandparents Day, now celebrated each year on the first Sunday after Labor Day.

“I never had grandparents and I always wanted them,” Blake said. “I never envied anyone and I still don’t, except for one thing, and that’s having grandparents.”

She does, however, have 10 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. This year, she will most likely celebrate Grandparents Day and her birthday, Sept. 10, with one of her sons and his family.

Blake, also known as Theresa Blalack, began her campaign in 1955 at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. She started gathering signatures there and traveled around the country collecting thousands to take to the President.

In the course of her campaign, she became known as the “Pin-Up Grandmother” because she often donned bikinis and the “Bunny Grandmother” because she took to wearing a homemade Playboy Bunny outfit in her effort to win publicity and support for the day.

She still refuses to wear “old-lady clothes” and comfortably posed for a photographer recently in black stretch pants and white boots.

Though some predicted that Grandparents Day would never happen, Blake said she has always enjoyed tackling tasks that were supposedly impossible. The day was proclaimed in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter.

Blake’s biography has been included in many “Who’s Who” publications and she has earned a lot of honors for her accomplishments, including a proclamation last week by the Costa Mesa City Council.

Blake said her life really started after she turned 50 and moved to Hollywood with her invalid husband.

There, she did all the things she had dreamed of doing but never had time for. She took voice lessons and learned to tap dance, swim, play golf, jump on a trampoline, bowl and play tennis.

“I was 50 before I had any money or spare time,” Blake said. “Before that, I was so busy sending my sons to college, and I spent 27 years taking care of my husband.”

Once in Hollywood, she built and managed nine apartment buildings. She also appeared in several movies and television shows. She wrote a book called “You Too Can Do It.” She traveled around the world, appearing in newspapers from Amsterdam to Tehran in hot pants and bathing suits and on the backs of camels and donkeys.

“I was always a nut. I loved to do things people didn’t expect,” Blake said. “The only reason I got so much publicity was I had the body of a 20-year-old when I was in my 60s, 70s and 80s.”

Although she had a stroke in 1987 which left her paralyzed on the left side, she has continued to remain active and writes a monthly column for the California Senior Citizen newspaper. Two months ago, she moved out of her mobile home and into a retirement villa, but she has completely redecorated her room there so it looks anything but institutional.

Friends she met in the parking lot of a K mart and elsewhere helped her move her belongings, hang her pictures, and arrange to have tile laid and wallpaper and drapes hung, transforming the room into something resembling a grand salon.

“I came here because I thought I’d better come while I still had all my marbles and could fix it up pretty,” Blake explained. “But I think maybe I should have waited a little longer. Most of the people here have given up on life.”