SAN CLEMENTE : Outspoken and Very Independent

When 82-year-old Ann MacKellar addressed the City Council in November, she strode confidently to the front of council chambers, stood several yards away from a podium and microphone reserved for public speakers and said to then-Mayor Scott Diehl, “I don’t need a microphone for you to hear what I have to say.”

The opinionated octogenarian then proceeded to scold Diehl and the rest of the council over the deteriorating conditions of her San Clemente neighborhood.

When she was finished, the bespectacled grandmother of six drew a rousing ovation from a capacity crowd of more than 300 people. She later explained why she was “in a snit” with the council.

“Those cotton-picking City Council members,” MacKellar said, “I told them to get out of their chairs and work with the people; to walk the streets and really see what’s going on in the neighborhoods instead of driving around in their cars.”

Being outspoken and independent has always been her nature, said MacKellar, who continues to operate her own San Clemente needlework shop called Round Three Needlework on Avenida de la Estrella.

“You have to just keep on keeping on at this stage of the game.”

MacKellar spends at least 40 hours a week at her business where she waits on customers and tends to such details as ordering new supplies and keeping books.

“The shop pays for itself,” she said. “I have the basics in life, I don’t need any frills.”

But she does more than just sell needlework supplies and kits to her customers. She dispenses advice, shares colorful stories of her life and has shown many customers how to perform particular forms of stitchery, which she finds therapeutic.

“It’s like therapy,” she said. “If more people would do this, you wouldn’t have so many doctors handing their patients prescriptions for pills. They should tell them to work with their hands. It really does help people to relax.”

MacKellar lives alone in the two-bedroom home she bought with her first husband in 1957. She has lived in the house ever since, except for a brief move to Nevada in the late 1970s when she remarried after her first husband died in 1965. She was widowed for a second time in 1979.

“I moved here to this city when it was all newlyweds and the nearly dead, and I’ve seen it grow and groan,” she said. “And believe me, it’s done a lot of groaning.”

Although she has made many friends and enjoyed a successful business, she has strong words for the city where she said she and her first husband, Duncan MacKellar, courted in the 1920s.

“I don’t think the town has kept its character,” MacKellar said. “I think it should be like a nice, warm home that is beautiful when you drive into it and beautiful until you drive out of it.”

And driving is something MacKellar continues to enjoy in her 1975 Ford Elite.

“I get behind the wheel and go,” she said, smiling. “I can still drive 500 miles without stopping. I love to travel because you feel so free. It’s just fun.”

She said her secret for good health does not involve vitamins or special foods.

“I eat everything that isn’t good for me,” she said. “But every day when I get up, there’s something new to do. I’ve had more than my good share of love, good friends and all the good things in life. That’s what keeps me around.”