Reconnecting with the Palisades’ Fitness Family

In August, we featured this photo from April 10, 1969 in our “Out of the Past” section. Emails came flooding in with memories about the Elliott family—longtime fixtures in Pacific Palisades as leaders at the local YMCA. Catching up with the Elliotts this week took the Post from Venice Beach to Texas; to NCAA volleyball championships and Indio spin classes. 

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

Mel Elliott admits that the first time he met Durten, “she was a little ticked off” at him.

As a cheeky American exchange student, Mel had wandered into Durten’s fencing course at Sporthocshule (Sports University) in Cologne, Germany, toting the wrong hardware.

Durten’s course was on the French foil, one of fencing’s lightest, most nimble implements, but Mel had stomped in with a heavy-duty sabre.

It was an inauspicious start for the American track star and the German world-class fencing instructor, but Mel and Durten ultimately formed a close bond.

They sat across from one another in the mensa speaking English: Durten brushing up on her second language; Mel grateful to speak in his mother tongue for a change.

“She was always cracking jokes,” Mel told the Palisadian-Post. “She was just a good person. We had a lot in common because we were both athletes.”

And when Mel returned to the States, Durten eventually came along too.

The two were married in Kansas City, where their son Jerritt was born and Mel, at 25 years old, served as the local YMCA’s youngest-ever executive director.

They lived in Missouri until the late 1960s, when Y connections clued Mel in to an opportunity in Los Angeles.

He told the Post that on one of their first visits to Pacific Palisades, he and Durten stood on the bluffs looking over the ocean.

“This is where we’re going to raise our kids,” they decided.

So the Elliott roost settled into the Palisades: Mel, Durten, Jerritt and soon a daughter, Tanja.

Mel set to work growing the local Y, building on pilot programs he developed in Kansas City to massively increase engagement in sports leagues by both parents and young players.

Durten brought her skills and passion to the Y as the teacher of kinetics classes, helping young children learn the basics of stretching, strength, coordination and balance.

“Bars, hoops, slides, a magic rope and wands are the tools of learning for pint-size gymnasts,” read a 1969 Post feature on her courses. “They’re taught by a blonde, blue-eyed, statuesque German—Durten Elliott, who adds warm, responsive and loving ingredients.”

Tanja and Jerritt both caught their parents’ passion for sports and fitness, blooming into successful, multi-sport athletes.

At the YMCA and in a Miami Way backyard that featured paddleball and basketball courts (plus a pool), Tanja and Jerritt told the Post they forged life-long friendships around outdoor play in the sunny Palisades.

“We had some really great years,” Mel remembered.

But, as is often the case, idyllic years shared a timeline with sobering realities.

Mel and Durten ultimately separated while the kids were still young, and in 1999, Durten lost her life to cancer at an early age.

In the Palisades, she is dearly missed and fondly remembered.

“I came to work for Mel Elliott at the Palisades YMCA in 1977 and marveled at Durten Elliott’s ability to get preschoolers and moms alike moving in ways that were new to them,” Duke Ostendorf, a current YMCA board member, wrote to the Post.

“I still have people that tell me how much they enjoyed [her] classes,” Jerritt mused.

Tanja believes that’s because her mother had a special way of understanding what her young students needed: “She really connected with kids and she really was able to inspire them in ways that made them feel comfortable.”

In a similar way, she told the Post, her mother continues to inspire her today.

Tanja has largely remained on the Westside in adulthood, living in Santa Monica and Venice, and spending her free moments hiking and backpacking in nature, a passion she always shared with her mother.

A volleyball player in high school and college, Tanja now works at a clinical diagnostic company, specializing in functional medicine, like a new test that will help measure precise levels of nutrients in an athlete’s diet.

Jerritt enjoyed a successful high school and collegiate volleyball career of his own—he still credits legendary Palisades Charter High School coach Howard Enstedt for convincing him to try out in the first place.

But his greatest achievements have come as a nationally recognized coach.

After graduating from Cal State Northridge and serving as a collegiate assistant coach, Jerritt made waves as an interim coach at USC in the early 2000s, seizing a tenuous opportunity and producing two of the program’s strongest seasons in decades.

Those years earned him Pac-10 Coach of the Year honors and a reputation as one of the game’s best recruiters, leading to a head coaching position with the University of Texas, where he remains one of the college game’s leading figures today.

He’s helped make the Longhorns a perennial contender and guided them to a 2012 NCAA championship that brought the Elliott clan together in Louisville, Kentucky, to celebrate.

Despite leading busy lives in separate states, the Elliott siblings keep in constant contact.

Jerritt’s ties to his hometown remain strong as well: “The Palisades has always been a community where people keep in touch,” he told the Post.

Coach Elliott often celebrates the Fourth of July in the Palisades, running in the annual 10k and catching up with old friends, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr among them.

He marvels to see his three kids befriend the children of his old high school pals.

Jerritt hinted that eventually moving back to the Palisades is at least a possibility, but in the midst of yet another high-powered season, the coach’s focus understandably remains in Texas for the time being.

And then there’s the proud father Mel, who has racked up numerous masters runners accolades over the years, but would rather talk about what Tanja’s up to, or maybe where Texas volleyball is ranked this week.

He had to catch his breath before his interview with the Post: Living in Indio with his wife Robin, he still teaches morning spin classes five days a week, deep into “retirement.”

No surprise. Through life’s trials and triumphs, the Elliott family keeps on moving.