Tennis and Older Things Are Her Loves

When she was 8 years old, Marilyn Coduti announced to her parents that she wanted to be a professional tennis player.

“I don’t think my parents took me seriously,” remembers the San Clemente woman, who didn’t pick up a tennis racket until she was 22.

In fact, she really didn’t do anything with sports in high school, but one day after graduating, “I was watching a group playing tennis and it looked like fun. I thought I should fill my dream,” she said.

After teaching herself to play the game, Coduti started entering tournaments and later hired a coach to polish her game.

“I was never a seeded player, but for a $20 entrance fee, you could get to play in most of the tournaments throughout the country,” she said. “I traveled anywhere they would have me. It was a better career than working.”

So after 12 years of a somewhat nomadic and hectic life on the tournament trail, Coduti bought an older Spanish home in San Clemente and settled down to a more restful life.

Well, sort of.

“For some reason, I had a penchant for older things, including my house, and I spent nine months restoring it to its original state,” said Coduti, who acted as her own general contractor.

But wouldn’t you know, a neighbor decided to build a second-story addition which she felt would ruin the character of her older home, as well as others like it in the area.

Her home--and about 250 others--reflect the “Spanish Village by the Sea” theme built in the 1920s by the late real estate developer Ole Hanson. Many of the homes have been torn down and replaced by condominiums.

Coduti, who took business law classes at Pierce College in the San Fernando Valley and once worked in a law office before getting hooked on tennis, decided to fight her neighbor’s building addition.

She filed an 11-page appeal to the Community Design Commission.

“I had never been involved in anything like this kind of thing, but I felt so strongly about keeping the Spanish theme, I had to do something,” said the one-time San Fernando Valley and Manhattan Beach resident.

The neighbor decided not to build the addition, but in the interim, Coduti formed a group of about 50 homeowners who lived in houses from the Hanson era, calling it the Spanish Village Heritage Group.

She and the others want to preserve San Clemente’s remaining Spanish-style homes built by Hanson.

She was named president.

“I didn’t particularly like being out in front (as president). I’m basically a pretty shy person,” said Coduti, who became familiar with politics during the building-appeal process. “This is not something I set out to do.”

In fact, she once took out papers to run for the City Council but never filed them, preferring to be “an ordinary citizen.”

“I’m not a politician, but part of me is intrigued by the process.”

Through it all, Coduti said, “I learned that if citizens are concerned with things in their city, they need to speak up; otherwise they are not going to be heard.”

Her group recently held an open house in one of the early Spanish-style homes and attracted 100 people.

They viewed exhibits designed to show why preserving older Spanish homes would be good for the community.

‘It was wonderful,” she said.