Pioneer’s Granddaughter a Woman Ahead of Her Time

Today’s column was supposed to focus on the Orange County Pioneer Council, which will introduce five new oral histories at a luncheon in Placentia today. Kathy Frazee, associate director of Cal State Fullerton’s oral history program, had even been kind enough to open its offices on Saturday morning so I could review the new pieces it helped the Pioneer Council put together.

But when I started reading the first one, an interview with Onnolee Bonnye Elliott of Tustin, I got hooked. And a little side-tracked.

Elliott, known mostly as a leading expert on macadamia nuts, is someone who ought to be an honorary member of every feminist group in Orange County. She lists her age as “in the 70s.” Her grandfather was among Orange County’s pioneers. She was an early pioneer for women’s rights.

“I guess I was 40 years ahead of my time,” she told interviewer Maureen Rischard of the Pioneer Council, a private group dedicated to preserving the county’s past. She didn’t mean it boastfully. She meant it with regret.

As a child, Elliott preferred model airplanes to dolls. In school in Santa Ana, she lettered in every sport available to girls at the time: hockey, baseball, basketball and volleyball. The trouble with Elliott, as some school officials saw it, was that she wasn’t satisfied with just the things available to girls.

She wanted to take drafting, metal shop and wood shop. At that time, those were boys’ subjects.

“I made loud noises and the school finally allowed me to take those courses,” she told Rischard. “You know, we girls have been discriminated against all our lives.”

She was finding that out quickly. She wanted a career in engineering, but was rejected by every engineering college she tried: males only. Instead, she earned a degree in bacteriology and medical technology at USC. She also studied at UC Berkeley, and eventually earned a master’s degree in chemistry. She was one of the very few women in any of her courses for those degrees.

Elliott went to work for local hospitals, and helped set up the original technology labs at several, including Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, St. Jude Medical Center and South Coast Medical Center. She worked for 40 years as a clinical chemist here, spending most of the early years convincing male doctors to accept her.

Elliott was an air-raid warden during World War II, but also played another important role at the Santa Ana Army Air Base. Putting a childhood love to good use, she built model planes for the government. The models were used to teach new cadets about military aircraft. And you’re right if you guessed that she was the only woman in that group.

Elliott’s interests went far beyond the technical world. She was also an avid student of California’s past, and eventually earned a doctorate in history. She also had a great love for the land. She became a farmer.

At her small farm in Tustin, she has raised celery, potatoes, pumpkins, lima beans, avocados, berries, apples, pears, figs, persimmons, peaches, plums and several varieties of macadamia nuts. She’s almost always had a greenhouse, where she indulges her love of orchids.

Elliott has traveled to every continent. She says Antarctica--where she went last year--is her favorite. “It’s so pristine and peaceful,” she told her interviewer. But typical of Elliott, she’s a little unhappy that her tour leader wouldn’t let her swim in the Arctic Ocean, the only ocean she hasn’t been in.

She also didn’t get to ski in Antarctica. “That annoyed me too,” she said.

After reading Elliott’s lengthy oral history, I jumped on the telephone to call her.

She didn’t think much of my question. “Why wouldn’t I be skiing at my age? What’s age got to do with it?”

Elliott is never anything but blunt. I asked if she is a supporter of today’s feminist causes.

“I don’t know how much good can be done,” she said. “The male animal is never going to change.”

The fight for gender equality is not the only struggle Elliott has had on her hands. Three times, astonishingly, she and her parents lost their land to the county. Twice it was for construction of the Santa Ana Freeway, once for the building of the Newport Freeway.

She’s written her own book on California’s early days, and says she enjoyed helping the Pioneer Council with its project. “It’s a shame they didn’t have this when my mother, Jo, was alive,” she said. “Hers would have been a fascinating story.”

County Recorders: The Pioneer Council has now completed 58 oral histories, interviews with longtime area residents. I read one other: Interviews with Jack Gerrard and Phyllis Gerrard Onstott, whose father, Hugh Gerrard, was one of the founders of the Alpha Beta supermarket chain.

The others to be presented today, at a luncheon at Alta Vista Country Club, are from Eddie Grijalva, a descendant of the family that established the first adobe in Orange County; Bill Proud, whose father was the county’s first road supervisor; and Raymond Ross, whose family came to Orange County in covered wagons before the turn of the century.

Elliott was interviewed in part because her grandfather was a founder of Wintersburg, now part of Huntington Beach.

Guardians of the Past: You’ve got to search hard to find the oral history program at Cal State Fullerton. It’s on the fourth floor of the old library, right now surrounded by cavernous rooms of empty bookshelves. Since 1967, its stated role has been “to preserve the experiences of ordinary citizens who had witnessed or participated in significant events.”

Its staff transcribes the Pioneer Council’s tapes and produces the written work in beautifully bound, blue coffee table-type books. Two of the program’s more extraordinary collections: Interviews with Japanese Americans from Orange County who were interned during World War II, and a vast set of interviews with local residents who knew Richard Nixon in his early days. They are rich with little-known material.

Here’s a line from Cecil Pickering (interviewed in 1970), who came from one of the first farm families in Yorba Linda. She’s explaining why the Nixons, close family friends, moved from there to Whittier:

“They didn’t have good soil and they didn’t have the money to buy good fertilizer. It was that red soil and it comes up in blocks like sugar loaf when you cultivated it, and the water would just flow right down and dry out. The Nixons tried to make a go of lemons and just couldn’t do it.”

About the Interviewer: I could never have interviewed Onnolee Elliott with the skill of Maureen Rischard. Rischard, 75, was born and raised in Orange County. She’s been doing oral histories for a number of groups for 20 years.

“A lot of people are reluctant because they don’t think they have anything interesting to say,” Rischard told me. “But once you get them talking, they open up with all kinds of wonderful information.”

I had to laugh when she told me why she wanted to interview Elliott: “I knew she wouldn’t be routine.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com