At 104, She Keeps Up on the Long and the Short of News
When Rena Shinner McLeon was young, her father was worried about her health.
She had been a sickly child and so her father decided to send her to Seattle to live with an uncle for a few months. He figured the bracing Seattle air would help.
It must have worked.
On Tuesday, McLeon, now living comfortably and modestly in Vista, will celebrate her 104th birthday.
She lives alone, does her own housekeeping and her own cooking, with the aid of a girl who comes in once a week. She has a nip of Canadian Club at noontime every so often, for medicinal purposes only, naturally.
“It’s all mental,” she says of her longevity. “ ‘As a man thinketh, so is he.’ I’ve heard that all my life. It’s one of the phrases I believe in.”
She jokes that one thing that keeps her going is to take care of her half-brother, William Shinner of Vista, a mere lad at 86.
She is slowed now and can’t travel alone, which is a disappointment since she was taking ocean cruises until just a few years ago. “It’s tough when summer comes and everybody is going somewhere but me.”
Born in Evanston, Ill., she lived in Denver, San Francisco and La Mesa. She remembers arriving in San Francisco in 1912 and hearing newsboys hawking extras about the sinking of the Titanic.
She married only once and was widowed in 1939, with no children. She worked in a dress shop in Los Angeles and moved to Vista some 20 years ago.
She spends her days baking and reading. She read Kitty Kelley’s biography of Nancy Reagan and was scandalized: “I’m going to tell you that’s some book. Did you know she (Mrs. Reagan) ran the United States? She ran the government.”
She may be the only person in America who thinks Barbara Bush dresses too provocatively: “I think it’s vile the short dresses she’s wearing.”
William Shinner calls her “a very determined person.”
She stays current. For her 100th birthday, she got a microwave oven.
“She’s inspirational,” said her niece, Laura Cline Abrahamson, a San Diego attorney. “Here she is 104, and still full of life, love and energy. I adore her.”
Case of Deja Vu
That was then, this is now.
Let’s look at recent quoted comments of Tom Shepard, political consultant to mayoral candidate Susan Golding.
The day after the primary, Shepard called Peter Navarro a “fraud” for supposedly not telling the truth.
Last week, Shepard said the latest PLAN! initiative will allow Navarro “to funnel large individual contributions” to his campaign in violation of the city’s $250 limit for contributions.
Telling lies to bamboozle the public? Funneling funny money through a third party to subvert campaign laws?
Aren’t those the same accusations that led to Shepard being indicted for conspiracy and perjury after the last mayoral campaign he ran: the 1983 Hedgecock bid?
Yes, they were. For the record: In a plea bargain, Shepard pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
An Early Morning Pulse
Notable things.
* The electronic campaign continues.
Bill Clinton this morning is set to answer questions for two hours from groups in Tulsa; Detroit; Palm Beach; Groton, Conn., and San Diego, via a hookup on the CBS show “This Morning.”
The San Diego group will be stationed in the library at Mission Bay High School, including a San Diego State University student, a yacht salesman, former pro footballer Brian Sipes, lawyer-activist Denise Ducheny and Mission Bay principal Maruta Gardner.
Gardner says she plans to quiz Clinton on his education record as governor in Arkansas. To be live on the East Coast, the session starts at 4 a.m. here.
* Making the rounds: A recent article (“A Month in Paradise”) in conservative/libertarian magazine The American Spectator.
It concludes that UC San Diego, unlike other institutions of higher learning, is not yet being stifled by the pitty-pat of political correctness.
Edward Norden writes: “Not only the hard sciences and engineering, but whole departments in the social sciences and even a few in the humanities are uninfected by p.c.”
Norden dropped in on three-dozen classes of various disciplines. He reports being welcomed most places but booted out of a class in women’s studies.