Jet-setting from the desert to the sea

Betty Gillespie grew up in the desert but has spent most of her life

near the water. The 82-year-old native of Phoenix, Ariz., recalls

when the arid metropolis was only a small southwestern town. She now

makes her home in the Newport Peninsula in a bustling student-filled

neighborhood she laughingly calls “The Warzone.”

“It’s a lot of fun though,” she said.

Gillespie volunteers five days each week at the Costa Mesa Senior

Center, where executive director Aviva Goelman is quick to point out

Gillespie’s vibrant sense of humor.

A world traveler, Gillespie has visited many far-off locales on

her way to Newport Beach. Before her retirement, she was a business

owner in Northern California selling microwave ovens at franchises in

Monterey and Santa Cruz. Her parent company, Friedman’s Microwave

Ovens, picked up the tab as she jetted across the globe. She spent a

morning with the Daily Pilot’s Andrew Edwards to talk about her work

at the senior center and trace her path from the desert to the sea.

What is a typical day like here at the Senior Center?

I get here, usually at 11 a.m. or something like that, but people

come in here at 9 in the morning and they have doughnuts and coffee.

You buy coffee, actually you buy a cup, and you use the cup. Even if

you bring your own cup, you pay for coffee. And they have doughnuts

and they have sweet rolls, and people sit around and talk. They just

visit, and there’s a lot of bingo, people play bridge all day long.

And there’s lots of card games going on, there’s cribbage going on.

You volunteer here five days a week, what keeps you here so long?

I come in, in the morning, and I chat with my friends and I work

in the kitchen, and I don’t set up things at the table, but I serve

the bread and I get the stuff ready to serve.

Do most people here volunteer as many days as you?

Some do. I enjoy volunteering, there’s a great deal of camaraderie

in this club. If you ever get lonely, it’s good thing to join and

volunteer. I enjoy volunteering; I’ve been a volunteer for years.

When I lived in Phoenix, I used to volunteer for the Visiting Nurses

Assn. You drive nurses around to patients and they take care of them.

You get a lot out of volunteering. Giving of yourself is very

helpful, it really is, and it makes you feel like you’re really good,

like you’re helping.

What was Phoenix like when you were growing up?

It was a small town. Scottsdale is a very posh area now, but if

you lived in Scottsdale, you didn’t admit you lived in Scottsdale.

You got a post office box in Phoenix and didn’t tell people you lived

in Scottsdale. It was great, it was a country town, and we had one

high school. Now they have so many you can’t see straight. It was a

country town; it was just a tiny little town. It was such fun growing

up in that little town.

What do you do with your friends from Phoenix?

We’re down to three. We’ve dropped dead along the way (laughs),

but I think it’s fascinating that you can have friends that you’ve

known that long and still keep in touch. We’re all through grade

school, high school and college, we separated when we went to

college, everybody went to different colleges, and got married and

all that stuff. But we still manage to get together once a year.

How did it come about that you moved to California?

I moved to California to get out of Phoenix. I had lived there all

my life and I got a divorce and decided it was time for a change, so

I took my kid and moved to Northern California. And then I moved to

Southern California because my husband was ill and my brother and

sister-in-law lived down here ... they were the only relatives I had,

and I knew they weren’t going to move so I moved. I moved down here

to be close to them.

What were your travels like?

They were great because Friedman’s had stores all across the

United States and we got to travel with all kinds of people that were

in the same business, and we traveled first class all over. We stayed

in first-class hotels; it was great. We were royally entertained. It

was just marvelous.

We went to Tokyo, Japan, and we saw the Pope, not in Tokyo, Japan,

though ... We went to Switzerland, and you name it you saw it. In the

Caribbean, we went on cruises.

What is the importance of having a sense of humor?

To survive, my mother taught me that. If you don’t have a good

sense of humor, you might as well forget it.