Evoking the Wonder of Mission History

Fred Purdy asks a group of fourth-graders to join hands around the massive oak at the entrance to Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Then he asks them to rebuild the circle beside the tree so they can see how big it really is. “Is the tree older or younger than the 221-year-old mission?” Purdy asks the children.

“Younger,” they scream.

“That’s right,” Purdy says. “The tree is only half as old as the mission is.” As long as Purdy is leading them, students touring the 18th century mission won’t yawn their way through their tour. Purdy won’t let them. Instead, he will pique their interest in history by calling a wooden wagon a 200-year-old pickup and conjuring up tales about residents who lived where they now stand.

Purdy, who will say only that he is over 65, is president of the Mission San Juan Capistrano Docent Society, which has about 50 active members. Although he has emphysema and Parkinson’s disease, Purdy, who lives in Laguna Niguel, believes it’s important to give something back to the community by volunteering.

Mission officials say he has been the most requested tour guide since he joined the organization about two years ago.

Instead of just reciting historical facts, Purdy, who taught high school history for 40 years, immerses students in stories about the people who lived in the mission that Spanish padre Junipero Serra founded in 1776.

Purdy and other docents look as though they stepped from the colorful frescoes painted on the mission’s adobe walls. Dressed in black, like an 18th century Spanish settler, Purdy doesn’t explain that the room they are entering once was used to smoke meat. That would be too easy. Purdy bugs his eyes and takes a deep breath. The children do the same.

“Does somebody smell something strange?” he asks the fourth-graders from Stoneybrook Christian School, not far from the mission. “It’s not adobe bricks and it’s not other people.”

With a little prompting, the children learn how people lived at a time when the mission stretched from what is now Camp Pendleton to Disneyland, when trees and buildings didn’t obstruct the view of the Pacific Ocean.

The historical landmark is Orange County’s oldest settlement and the third-largest tourist attraction, following Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm, according to the Orange County Business Council.

Mission publicist Jim Graves said the site attracts more than 500,000 visitors annually, putting a high demand on docents for tours. He said most docents are seniors, quite often retired teachers like Purdy.

“It’s difficult to fulfill the requests for tours because of the dwindling number of docents available due to health problems in the last year,” Graves said.

The volunteers work about six hours a week. The accuracy of their stories is vital; last year there were tours conducted for about 80,000 children and 15,000 adults, Purdy said.

Besides giving tours, docents also have constructed replicas of a Juaneno Indian shelter and a wagon known as a caretta. Purdy explained that it took an Indian woman one day to build the structure, but it took eight docents three weeks.

“I have a lot of respect for Native American women,” Purdy told the children as he hunched his willowy 6-foot-3 frame into the little straw hut.

For information about volunteering for the docent society, call the Mission Visitor’s Center at (714) 248-2048.