The Crowd:

For 50 years, she was the grand dame of Balboa Island. Amelia Seton, founder of the romantic Balboa dining room known simply as Amelia’s, passed away Saturday. She was 86.

Born Amelia Arbace in Massa Lubrense, Italy, she was the last survivor in an Italian family of 11 brothers and sisters.

At the end of World War II, Amelia married U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Gregor Seton on the Isle of Capri. The couple moved to the U.S. and settled in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles. Gregor Seton’s father was in the real estate business and he went to work, while Amelia Seton assumed the more traditional role of wife and mother caring for their two young children, Hetty and Randy.

While always the loving mother first and foremost, Amelia Seton, with her boundless energy, needed to participate in American life. Soon she became an activist in Republican Party politics and, beginning in the 1950s, she worked tirelessly on behalf of Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

The young family also began sharing summer getaways in the 1950s on Balboa Island. For Amelia Seton, it was an instant love affair with the quaint island. Raised along Italy’s Amalfi Coast with a special love of Capri, Balboa was indeed her own small American version of life by the sea.

One of the Seton’s favorite Balboa restaurants was known as the Cape Cod House, remembered with fondness by longtime residents. The Setons discovered that the dining room was for sale. Amelia Seton pleaded with her husband to buy the restaurant. Gregor Seton was less than enthusiastic. So, she went to her father-in-law. In October 1961, the Cape Cod House became Amelia’s, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Amelia’s was popular from the start. Local celebs, including the late Claire Trevor and her stepson Donald Bren, helped build its reputation. In 1967, after commuting from Los Angeles for six years, Amelia Seton convinced Gregor Seton to leave the real estate business, concentrate full time on the restaurant and move to Balboa Island. They built a home on Topaz Avenue and lived there ever since.

Gregor Seton passed away in 1987 following a battle with cancer. Amelia Seton never remarried.

“I could never replace my soul mate,” she would say.

Amelia Seton is survived by her beloved daughter, Hetty, and her husband, John Robinson, her cherished son, Randy Seton, who moved back into the family home to help care for his mother, and Hetty and John’s daughter, Alexandra Richardson, and her husband, Benjamin Richardson.

She will be remembered for her generous smile and warmth of personality, her fabulous Italian dishes and her eccentric fashions — especially her love of sparkle, sequins, and wild and dramatic colored clothing. Amelia Seton lived a full, rich life devoted to her family, her church, her politics, and to the community she adored. And she did all this without ever learning to drive a car. Funeral services are at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, 600 St. Andrews Road, Newport Beach.

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