Betty Lou Young, the longtime resident who helped to shape the identity of Pacific Palisades with her pen and a shovel, passed away on July 1 at the age of 91. For over 50 years, from the time she and her physician husband Thomas and their three children settled in Rustic Canyon, Betty Lou deepened her attachment to neighborhood and town, chronicling the history and protecting the small-town profile. Born on May 18, 1919 in Minneapolis, Betty Lou, an only child, moved to Long Beach with her recently divorced mother and grandparents. When it was time for high school, the emancipated teenager enrolled in Los Angeles High, and found room and board with a couple in the Virgil Avenue neighborhood. Betty Lou often described her childhood as that of abandonment, which perhaps contributed to her determination in her adult years to form a strong family and community. ’She burrowed into this community,’ her son Randy said this week. After graduating from UCLA in 1940, Betty Lou continued her studies at Smith College, earning a master’s degree in social work in 1942. That same year she and Thomas, whom she had met at a hockey game while he was at Harvard studying medicine, married before he deployed to the Pacific. After the war, the years were peripatetic while Tom completed his medical training and residency, until 1954, when he joined the staff at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. He later became chief of pathology, a post he held until he retired in 1982. In 1954, the family moved into what Betty Lou described as a ‘ranch house knockoff’ on Latimer Lane, kitty-corner from Rustic Canyon Park and the historic eucalyptus grove, which she spent decades protecting from neglect and abandonment. There are many chapters to recall in Betty Lou’s eight decades of community involvement. She was her husband’s stalwart companion, even accompanying him in cross-country hegira to the top 100 U.S. golf courses, pausing long enough for him to play a round of golf at each. Her involvement with her children was attentive, but not all consuming; as her son says, ‘she was too busy writing books and planning trips.’ Her passion lay in history, from serving as president of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society to supporting UCLA through the Gold Shield alumna group. In that organization, she was chairman of the oral history wing for which she and Mary Lee Greenblatt compiled a two-volume oral history of Westwood, with interviews of some of the pioneers of that village. Betty Lou’s foray into book publishing grew from a political threat. The Rustic Canyon residents asked her to write a pamphlet on the history of the community as ammunition in the fight to defeat a planned viaduct bisecting the canyon. After completing interviews with old-timers, many of whom were just one generation removed from the original Rustic Canyon settlers, Betty Lou felt she had enough material for a book. Her comprehensive history, ‘Rustic Canyon and the Story of the Uplifters’ (1975), began by defining Rustic Canyon, with a walk down the canyon from Mulholland to the sea, and continued with the Rancho days, the seaside resort era and the Uplifters, the summer-camp getaway for L.A.’s wealthy businessmen. The upper canyon section included chapters on Will Rogers Ranch and the famous Murphy Ranch, which was for a time a small Nazi enclave. The Rustic Canyon book established the collaboration with Randy that would continue in some fashion through 2006, with the publication of ‘Frontier Chautauqua: The Chautauqua Movement on the Pacific Coast.’ Mother and son not only shared a passion for Southern California history, but also a compatible approach. Randy would fact-check, navigate city hall records and verify while Betty was the precise writer who found a comfortable style between straight reporting and purple prose. They went on the write the definitive history of this town, ‘Pacific Palisades: Where the Mountains Meet the Sea,’ (1983), ‘Street Names of Pacific Palisades (1990), ‘Santa Monica Canyon: A Walk through History’ (1998) and the Chautauqua book. The two were also allied in their political endeavors. Betty Lou, an inveterate lifelong hiker, developed a respect and love for the Santa Monica Mountains, participating as early as 1966 in defending them from encroachments by developers. She joined Councilman Marvin Braude’s successful battle to defeat the paving of Mulholland in an area that to this day remains a dirt road. She was also at the forefront of preserving Los Liones Canyon as a state park. No firebrand, Betty Lou was reluctant to speak out, preferring to express herself in writing (including opinion pieces and essays about local history for the Palisadian-Post), although she often would instruct Randy on fine points at the many public hearings they attended. ’She’d get all hyped up about something and tell me to let them have it, and then after I fired off my diatribe, she’d say ‘Weren’t you a bit hard on them?” Uncomfortable with attention, Betty Lou was not self-aggrandizing nor given to hyperbole. She was, however, deeply moved when the Post honored her as ‘A Community Treasure’ for her ‘long-lasting commitment to Pacific Palisades’ in 2007. Writing for publication into her 90s, Betty Lou was most proud of her Santa Monica Canyon book, because she was telling Ernest Marquez’s story. She felt honored to be trusted with his family story, the descendent of the original land grant family. The great work of her life, however, was the Chautauqua book, completed in 2006. ‘This was a story that she had always wanted to write,’ Randy said. ‘She spent 20 years researching and visiting various Chautauqua sites around the country.’ Betty Lou, a dandelion-headed warrior in tennis shoes, possessed a rebar will, owing to her love for the community, which she looked upon as a family. ‘She took it as a personal affront if anybody did something that was unjust,’ Randy said. ‘She was earnest and honest.’ In addition to Randy, Betty Lou is survived by her daughters Susan and Deborah Young of Houston. She was predeceased by her husband in 1994. A memorial will be held in Los Liones Gateway Park later this year. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be sent to the Pacific Palisades Historical Society, Box 1299, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 or to the UCLA Foundation (Young Family Endowed Collection for Southern California History), attention:’Susan Kanowith-Klein, UCLA Library, 11334 Young Research Library, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575.’ Equally important, defend your sacred places, plant trees, pull out non-native plants, pick up your pooch’s poop, vote, and buy books at your local independent bookstore.
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