Councilwoman’s White Doves Make Life’s Rituals More Uplifting

When Janice Lee joined the Calabasas City Council (annual salary: $3,600), she kept her day job. Which explains why she’s heading to the funeral of a 103-year-old woman in a pickup truck stuffed with live birds.

It was barely 8 o’clock on a Sunday morning when Lee ducked into her backyard coop, setting off a flurry of flapping. She chose 21 snow-white rock doves, expertly plucking each one off its perch and plopping it into a cage.

“They know there’s a job coming up,” Lee says. She thinks the birds were tipped off the night before, when she brewed them a special high-energy tea, packed with electrolytes, to prevent dehydration on their flight home.

Lee breeds and trains homing pigeons (yes, rock doves are in fact pigeons, kin to the pudgy pests whose droppings deface many an urban statue). She releases the birds at weddings and bar mitzvahs, groundbreakings and grand openings.

But, truth be told, funerals are her favorite. Sure, weddings are more cheery, full of flying bouquets and blushing brides. But in a day full of Kodak moments, setting free a flock of white doves as newlyweds skip down the church steps amounts to mere icing on the cake.

“Memorial flights have so much more meaning,” she says. “There is some message these birds deliver that I think really helps a family when they are grieving.”

For all its poetry, the bird biz isn’t as easy as it looks. Danger lurks each time Lee carts her birds off to a performance. Predatory hawks stalk the skies and, on the ground, curious children may try to get at the caged doves. Poor weather increases the risk a bird may get lost.

To improve the odds, a Janice Lee dove release leaves nothing to chance. The copper-haired councilwoman sets strict rules for her events, all revolving around the safety of her doves. A Weather Channel devotee, she has been known to call off flights after hearing a stormy forecast. And she won’t release birds if it’s less than an hour before sunset--they could hit a stray branch or power line in the dark.

“If I’m doing a wedding and the bride is an hour late and it passes the deadline, that’s it,” says Lee, who keeps 120 doves. “I’m not going to throw my birds in the air if it’s not safe.”

No one knows exactly how homing birds find their way home, but they seem to navigate using the sun, the earth’s magnetic field, and familiar landmarks. The creatures are capable of flying hundreds of miles at a time, but today they face only a 12-mile trip back to Calabasas.

Most of the time, Lee says, the doves beat her home. They hop back into their coop through a tiny one-way door.

Lee started raising birds 10 years ago, after a serious neck injury left her bedridden. While she was recuperating, a friend gave her a pair of turtledoves. Lee found the gentle birds so healing that she began to raise rock doves, a heartier type that can be released into the wild. Turtledoves, however, are domestic pets with no homing ability, and are likely to starve or be killed by predators if released, she says.

By the time she pulls into Oakwood Memorial Park in Chatsworth in her shiny white pickup truck with vanity plates reading “DOVES,” Lee has wrapped up much of her day’s work. She has already performed the equivalent of an airplane preflight check on each dove, scrutinizing the wings for molting, which would ground the bird. She’s even timed the song the family has requested (Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”) to figure out just when to release the birds for maximum effect.

“Janice is really special,” says Victoria Burke, a funeral director at Pierce Bros. Valley Oaks in Westlake Village. “It’s not just about letting some doves go and getting the money. She’s so involved and heartfelt. People come up to me [after funerals] and say, ‘Did she know the deceased?”’

Before she approaches the graveside, Lee transfers the birds from their cages into wicker baskets. Even the baskets, decorated with silk flowers and ivy, are a safety feature, she says. They conceal the doves from hawks that could spot the glowing white birds from miles away and zoom in for an early lunch.

Lately Lee has taken to strapping the baskets shut with bungee cords. She added that precaution after a child flung open a basket lid at a wedding. The birds got out and, of course, flew home. “Luckily I had enough time to run back home and bring them back,” she notes.

The sun streams over the cemetery as the family and friends of Ruth M. Gylfe gather to say goodbye. Born in Sweden in 1897, Gylfe is remembered as a good-hearted mother and grandmother, a talented seamstress, and a gardener who planted many trees and loved flowers and birds.

Lee performs much of the service, explaining the significance of doves, from Noah’s ark down through the ages. She tells the family that the last dove that will be released symbolizes Gylfe’s spirit, winging home on its final journey.

“Homing doves are the creator’s gentle reminder that he does have a plan to bring each of them back home again,” she intones. “God will never abandon us, because he created us. If he brings these birds home, surely we must know he brings each of us home, too.”

The sun is blazing. A light breeze ruffles the blond hair of Gylfe’s many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, a butterfly floats by. Lee, clad entirely in black, slips over to the tape player resting beneath a tree. The opening swells of “Wind Beneath My Wings” fill the air.

Lee opens one basket and three doves, symbolizing the Holy Trinity, flutter out. She opens the second basket and 17 more (the Ten Commandments and the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer) sail into the bright blue sky.

Then Ruth Gylfe’s children, Norma Alexander and Donald Gylfe, lift the lid on the last basket. The white bird inside peers at them, hops out and flies off to join the others. The doves circle overhead for a moment, dipping through the trees, gliding back over the graveside, and finally soaring away into the wind.

“Fly! Fly!” Bette wails in the background. “Fly high against the sky . . . “

Everyone watches the doves until they disappear. Then they sigh, hug each other, wipe away their tears, and smile.

“I didn’t think I was going to cry because, you know, she’s 103 and it’s a joyous occasion,” says Kristine Hupp, one of Ruth’s granddaughters. “But as soon as I saw those birds, I started bawling.”