Senior News October, 2003 Vol. 24. No. 10

 

Published by the Humboldt Senior Resource Center in Eureka, California. HSRC is a non-profit community-based organization offering services for senior citizens, multi-generational families and caregivers.

Retirement brought her wit and wisdom to Senior News

When does Medicare pay for motorized wheelchairs or scooters?

Think About It: Thou shalt have teeth

Breast cancer misunderstanding is perpetuated

Sprouts-the lowliest can be the best

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Lucile Manley of McKinleyville has often written about her mastery over her garden. Photo by Barbara Clark

     Lucile Manley threw her head back and laughed out loud. The moment over, she bent back down to my manuscript and with her blue pen started marking out words. She has given me this gift repeatedly in our writers' group during the last nine years. In this same period she has contributed her column "Another Peak Experience" to Senior News every month that I've edited and written for this newspaper.

The story of Lucile Manley and Senior News goes back to before my time-to the early years when Julie Steiner and Deborah Webster were turning this into a readable monthly. Lucile offered them a column, and they responded with the words all writers want to hear: "Anything you give us, we would love to print."

It has been a love affair for Lucile Manley and Senior News ever since. As editor I feel the paper would be incomplete without her presence. More, the personal support and encouragement she has provided me are necessary to mention-because when I write about Lucile Manley the article has no chance to be objective.

Articles about Barbara Orange Cat's earlier years had already been published in Senior News, and thus it was that Orange Cat came into my life. Who can forget Flee, Oh Flea and A Zen Christmas? Additional stories in Lucile's inimitable style showed us the magic and mystery of being trained by a cat and also the humorous view of life by a Humboldt County transplant from Southern California.

"What I write about isn't funny to me," she said. "In fact some of the things I think are funny, no one else does; and some things I don't think are funny, everyone laughs at."

But her writing is funny. From QVC Anonymous to Potting in McKinleyville, from Veil the Jail to Sink Shrink Wrap, from Cow Watching to Broccoli Murders, it's no wonder that many readers turn to page five first.

So prolific has she been in Senior News, and now the McKinleyville Press, it is a surprise that she hadn't written before she moved to Humboldt County. "I wrote records of my conversations and some technical writing which I hated. I'd much rather do than write," she said.Lucile Manley retired when her other friends were retiring at age 65 from a social work position with the Los Angeles school system-a position in which she and a team of others from the police department, parole division, businesses and social services would meet to work on specific cases. Her writing then was about the complex issues of truancy in the students who could not be helped within the school system. It wasn't until she came here and attended a writing group at the Senior Resource Center that she proposed her column to the editors of Senior News, and others received the gift of her fanciful perspective.

When she retired, she set out in her recreational vehicle to see the world and to find the perfect place to spend her retirement. "I wanted tosee the Bay of Fundi and kudzu," she said. She wasn't a stranger to Humboldt County. Her daughter Pat, now living in Maryland, was a student at HSU. For those years, Lucile had visited here during summers and holidays, at first hating the cold rainy weather. But after two years of traveling coast to coast, she found no place she liked better.

" This place is unique in all the country and Canada," she said. "From Brookings to Fort Bragg, it is so beautiful up here with the redwoods, the ocean and the coastline, it is irresistible, unlike any other place." She now considers the weather perfect-never too hot, never too cold. She came to make her home in McKinleyville, a place she nurtures with her interest and energy and where she writes her column.

Many months of stories have now become a book, self-published as Tail Talk, the Eloquent Tale of Barbara Orange Cat. "I didn't see it as a book," Lucile recalled, " but the former director of the Senior Resource Center proposed it as a possible fundraiser and asked if I'd be interested in putting it together. She suggested Mary Scott might be interested in illustrating it." Mary Scott, formerly a nurse case manager in the center's social services division, brought Barbara Orange Cat and Lucile to life with her whimsical illustrations. Though the publishing project was almost completed, changes in management goals and funding priorities cancelled it, to everyone's bitter disappointment.

The completed manuscript sat on the shelf as Lucile was drawn to an unfolding drama in her professional field-the removal of some 300 people without homes who were evicted from the South Spit for medical reasons, a threatened outbreak of shigella. "At the time I interviewed 100 people on tape and transcribed the interviews," she said. "They were all residents of the South Spit. I don't use the word homeless anymore. Many of them had homes, just no land to put them on." She plans to finish that book next year.

"I knew I either had to finish Tail Talk or forget it," she said. "In May I decided I had worked too hard to scrap it, so I determined to finish. And now Tail Talk is a fundraiser for the senior center, for Senior News in particular."

Readers can meet Lucile and buy a copy of her book at a book signing and cat show that will be held from 2-4 p.m. Oct. 10 at the Senior Resource Center, 1910 California St., in the first floor Activity Room. You are invited to bring your own cat on a leash or in a cage to be introduced to the crowd and to enjoy kittens in a condo from the Sequoia Humane Society.

Of course, Lucile was the instigator of the cat show. "No one wants to come just to a book signing," she said, and tossed her head back with that characteristic laugh-and an understatement to go with it: "Maybe they'll come if we have something for them to see."

Barbara Clark is editor of Senior News and a biased reporter on the subject of Lucile Manley. This very story was improved by our writers' group picking it apart, removing words and generally making me look good. I hope to see our readers at Lucile's book signing and cat show at HSRC, 1910 California Street, Eureka, Friday, Oct. 10 from 2-4 p.m. See the ad with invitation on page five.

Come enjoy one of my favorite people and meet the good volunteers who work so hard on the Senior News Editorial Advisory Board.