Rowing through the golden years

Ann Krueger has been a Newport Beach resident for the past eight

years. She decided to move to Newport to live out her golden years.

Some may consider her a newcomer, but she spent time with her

grandparents in Corona del Mar when she was a child. Krueger has seen

many changes, from growing up on an orange ranch driving a Jeep at

age 12 to attending Orange High School at its original location,

which is now Chapman University. She enjoys an active retirement,

such as being the only female skipper for the Oasis Sailing Club to

kayaking on the Santa Ana River.

The 66-year-old sat down with the Pilot’s Luis Pena this week and

talked about the past and the present.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in Orange, so most of my childhood was spent on an

orange ranch on Collins and Glassell. Probably 1940 through the early

‘60s I lived there. It was great, I had a big barn to play in, lots

of room to roam around, big avocado trees -- just a lot of freedom.

There was work to be done, but that’s OK, my dad always made it fun.

And the most fun part was that I got to drive a jeep really early. I

was driving a jeep when I was 12 years old, had a real license at the

age of 14 because I was a farm kid. Since I was younger than most of

my classmates, it was neat to get a little head start on the driver’s

license. I was supposed to walk to high school, but I hardly ever had

to walk there -- either my friends or my parents’ friends would give

me a ride to school. So, it was easy. And earlier in elementary

school, I’d ride my bike to school.... I went to St. John’s school

the same school my parents went to -- same school my daughters went

to.

How did you end up in Newport-Mesa?

I started out visiting here at a very early age, before I can

remember. My grandparents had a house in Corona del Mar on the bluffs

up above China Cove. We spent a lot of time in China Cove. Wonderful

little cove, and then big Corona, little Corona. Just spend hours

there. We’d watch all the boats. Didn’t get to ride in boats, didn’t

get to go sailing, just wanted to. Took me a long time to get around

to being able to do that. Every Sunday, for sure, we would spend at

the big family get together with my grandparents. They also had a

house in Santa Ana, so depending on winter or summer, we’d be in

Santa Ana or Corona del Mar. Well financially, it was feasible to get

here, so we moved here about eight years ago. Love it! Got close to

the ocean, bike paths, I can kayak right out there in my backyard. I

try to take advantage of all the good things in Newport Beach.

What are your greatest accomplishments in life?

You know, that’s a hard one. And maybe it depends on where I am in

life as to what I thought were the great accomplishments, so you kind

of look at things in small steps. Like it’s a big thing to drive a

jeep, a big thing to get a driver’s license. Getting into college was

a big thing, graduating. I was a math major in college. At that time

long ago, there was a friend of mine, Sue. We were the first two

women math majors at the University of Redlands. And it was a time

where you would go in there for a physics class and the prof. would

ask, “Are you sure you have the right class?”

He was going to send me over to cooking, I think. But probably in

terms of accomplishments, those are goals, like getting my first job

as a teacher in aerospace. All those are goals, but when you look at

accomplishments, those are things that I did for me and maybe the

more important one is how do other people look at it, and probably

more important are things I’ve done for others, and now I try to be

more balanced. Spend a lot of time with the grandkids. I worked at

Ford Aerospace twice, and when I left there, one of the fellow

workers thanked me so much for listening to her. She’d been through

divorce and other problems and just thanked me for listening to her.

And probably being there for other people and being ready to listen

is probably the most important thing.

If you could re-do one moment or incident in your life, what would

it be?

I don’t know, things have gone pretty good, not to say I haven’t

made mistakes. Everybody did that sometimes. I think I have just

been, well, blessed with things. I have wonderful family to begin

with, and just kind of moved along with the flow of things, just took

advantage of opportunities as they came along. It’s been good. Life

is learning, you just keep moving ahead, continually learning. You

stop learning, you’re in trouble.

What profession other than yours would you like to have tried?

Actually, I have tried several, so I did this along the way. OK,

the one I wouldn’t have done over again was the egg cleaning -- don’t

need anymore of that.

What are some differences between a typical day in your life now

versus a day in your life 20 years ago?

When I was working, I put in a lot of hours -- I worked very hard.

I didn’t get to do the fun things I always wanted to do. I always

wanted to have time to play tennis and golf and sailing. I really

wanted to do that and I just didn’t think I had time, with working

and family, so now I’m catching up with those things. When I retired,

one of the first things that I did was went down to Orange Coast

College and took their sailing classes.

What is the greatest lesson you’ve learned in your life?

Some of these lessons you have to keep learning over and over.

When I was in college, my neck went up and suddenly, there were a lot

of math students. Well, except not all of these math students were

well prepared to handle the math classes. So one of my favorite profs

asked three of us if we would tutor these students and the college

would pay us a few bucks. I thought, OK, he’s a nice guy, I’ll say

yes to him and all and take a few bucks, and so a couple afternoons a

week we had a classroom and any of the students could come in and

we’d help them. Well, I thought I was helping them, but I learned a

whole lot more because in order to explain to somebody, I really had

to think it through, and so by helping others I came out to be the

big winner. You don’t lose when you help somebody else. You actually

learn more. That was a good thing, and then that’s just a lesson that

I keep on trying to make use of all my life.

What do you treasure most?

I think family is probably the most important and I’ve been

blessed with a nice family. They all live in the area, mostly in

Orange. They’re important -- we have good times together. Also, with

the church family too, that’s real important. Then after that, other

things just kind of fall in place.