Hitting the century mark

Mathis Winkler

Had he been born six months earlier, Donald Leroy Bartels would have

been alive at the same time as his favorite composer, Giuseppe Verdi.

The Italian died Jan. 27, and Bartels was born July 21. The year was

1901.

“He was a great composer,” Bartels said Wednesday. “It’s hard to

imagine anybody any greater.”

Together with his only daughter, Catherine Welch, and friends, Bartels

celebrated his 100th birthday at Costa Mesa’s Silverado Senior Living

home, where he recently moved from Laguna Beach. Dorothy, Bartels’ wife

of 37 years, died in 1975.

A South Dakota native, Bartels came to Southern California with his

parents as a 2-year-old and grew up on a farm in Downey.

He was one of two students in the first graduating class from the

School of Architecture at USC in 1923.

“It seemed like a normal thing to do,” he said.

Bartels, who suffers from dementia, said he couldn’t quite remember

what kind of projects he worked on. Welch helped out a little and said

her father had designed the interior of the Robinsons-May department

store in Fashion Island and built homes in Los Angeles’ Park La Brea area

after World War II.

He also designed a bomb shelter for a Beverly Hills businessman.

“We did a lot of things for rich people,” Bartels said. “That was a

normal thing for a rich person to want.”

While struggling to remember his professional accomplishments, Bartels

began to smile when asked whether he really was a self-confessed

chocoholic.

“Chocolate? Are you kidding?” he said, adding that he prefers the

darker kind. “I don’t care for milk chocolate.”