Pauliena B. Gaither
F, #429, b. 3 October 1905, d. 3 January 2011
| Father* | Alfred Gaither b. 1877, d. 1954 |
| Mother* | Mary Belle Flanagan b. 9 Sep 1876, d. 1937 |
Pauliena B. Gaither|b. 3 Oct 1905\nd. 3 Jan 2011|p429.htm|Alfred Gaither|b. 1877\nd. 1954|p426.htm|Mary Belle Flanagan|b. 9 Sep 1876\nd. 1937|p254.htm|||||||Bernard O. Flanagan|b. 21 Nov 1848\nd. 19 Mar 1917|p38.htm|Mary M. Anderson|b. Apr 1850\nd. 3 Mar 1907|p39.htm| |
| Note* | Pauliena B. Gaither //rotwnews.com/section/local/pauliena/6292 Twin Peaks, CA - The passing of local historian Pauliena B. LaFuze, 105, has been reported by the Rim Of the World Historical Society. She was the author of the original two-volume work, "The Saga of the San Bernardinos," a work that covers the mountain history from 1851 to 1930. Pauliena B. LaFuze passed away on Monday, January 3, 2011, at the age of 105. She was a local historian and the author of "Saga of the San Bernardinos." (Photo by Women's Club of Lake Arrowhead.) She was born on October 3, 1905, in Anderson, Indiana and grew up in Pendleton, Indiana, and married Cecil LaFuze on August 31, 1934. The couple spent three weeks camping at Strawberry Flats (Twin Peaks) and the young newlyweds eventually settled in Twin Peaks. Last year, the Women's Club of Lake Arrowhead and the Historical Society co-hosted a community birthday party. LaFuze, a member of the Women's Club since the 1930s, is honored with a plaque at Switzer Park on Highway 18 recognizing her inspiring, lifelong efforts to conserve and restore the forest. Pauliena LaFuze and the late J. Putnam Henck share memories at the Mountains History Museum in Lake Arrowhead in August 2009. (Photo by Rim of the World Historical Society.) MEMORIAL SERVICE A graveside memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Friday, January 7, at Pomona Valley Memorial Park. The facility is located at 502 East Franklin Avenue in Pomona. Visit DIRECTIONS to obtain a map to the Pomona Valley Memorial Park. ---------------------- Per daughter, Kathleen, she passed away on 3 Jan 2011. Per cousin, (Esther) Sue (Gaither) Vanzant, the funeral was held in Pomona, CA on Friday, 7 Jan 2011. Still alive 9/19/10, living in a nursing home in Lucerne (I think) memory still pretty good, walks with a cane per daughter, Kathleen in conversation with Eleanor Griffy. Source: http://www.rimoftheworld.net/columns/doe_huff/our_town_-_5 Paulina LaFuze, one of our premier local historians, is now 103 years old and still going strong. She wrote a book, The Saga of the San Bernardinos in 1971 and it was republished by the Big Bear Historical Society a few years ago. She typed the original book - on a manual typewriter - that had more than 500 pages in two volumes and was published by the San Bernardino County Museum Association. Paulina used the diary of pioneer lumberman Joseph Tyler written in the 1870's as the initial basis for her book. Now from her book, this week's trivia question is: Each year, a new grey squirrel would be stuffed and encased in a glass-sided box above the entry to the main lodge at the Squirrel Inn. They would have an annual "changing of the squirrel" buffet dinner on the lawn of the inn each fall. What did they do with the "old squirrels" from previous years? ---------------------- Source: http://alpenhornnews.com/ Pauliena LaFuze, premiere mountain historian -- 10/29/2009 Part Three - Pauliena begins historical research Pauliena Gaither LaFuze, a Jamestown (Virginia) descendent, graduated from De Pauw University (Phi Bata Kappa), taught school for five years and married her high school friend, Cecil LaFuze, in 1934. They honeymooned and then moved to Twin Peaks where Cecil worked for the Edison Company. During World War II, Cecil was transferred off the mountain, but returned in 1949. Pauliena was active in both the Twin Peaks Worthwhile Club and the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club. She was involved with her three kids, with PTA, and had become the chairman of the Women_s Club_s History and Landmarks Committee, becoming especially interested in the pioneer sawmill owners of Lake Arrowhead Pauliena became a substitute teacher when the school district opened a high school in 1956. Her son, David, was a member of the first graduating class (1957) at Rim High School. I once asked her why, with a teaching credential, didn_t she teach fulltime and she said at first because the mountains didn_t have a high school and secondly, because she lived in Twin Peaks and she didn_t drive, she didn_t live close enough to a school to walk to it. With the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club, Pauliena was one of the members who helped hand water the seedling trees at Switzer Park. She asked J. Putnam Henck to help the club (his mother, Mary Putnam Henck, was very involved with it) and the mountain communities from 1958-1960, so he installed a watering system there. The women_s Club won the top Conservation Award from the Women_s Club Federation in 1960, while Pauliena LaFuze was the local women_s club president, for their dedication and work at Switzer Park, and installed a plaque next to the Sara Switzer Monument memorializing the Conservation Award. The year 1960 is also significant because that is the year Pauliena learned to drive a car, giving her freedom to do more historical research. She spent one day a week down at the San Bernardino City Library. Pauliena was intrigued with what she found and began cross checking the information in sawmill owner Joe Tyler_s diaries. _I used to go to the county library research room, newspapers and county offices so frequently they knew me by name,_ she once told me. _They just let me walk in, and they helped me find the materials I needed._ Most importantly, Pauliena spoke with everyone who knew about events first hand, although she carefully checked their memory of facts too. She did weekly research for over ten years. She searched through newspapers, dusty deeds, county records, diaries and her notes from oral histories presented to the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club and all brochures and history books she could find. _I never thought of it as work, and once I got into it I couldn_t quit,_ she said. During his career with Southern Californian Edison, Cecil LaFuze worked as the bookkeeper and material clerk for the mountain office, but he also spent many long winter days working on the crews to find line breakage when the power went out. He retired from the Edison Company in 1966 as assistant superintendent of the area. When he retired, Cecil planned to go fishing and Pauliena liked that idea, but was deeply involved doing research for her book, and it was wintertime. She described her dilemma this way, _I wanted peace and quiet to work in, and I needed to be close to my sources, so I went to San Bernardino, rented a little house right across from the library and the Hall of Records and worked terribly hard for the next three months. I got a lot done by researching during the day and typing up my notes at night. I found the research work to be interesting, like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I would read about one fact, like a will, and then go find its record in the county office... it was all so fascinating,_ she said. Pauliena promised to be done with the research before fishing season began on May 1st. Part 4 - Pauliena gets her book published Rhea-Frances Tetley Staff Historian 11-5-09 Mountain Historian Pauliena LaFuze, who celebrated her 104th birthday one month ago (October 3), is highly respected for writing the first footnoted history book of the San Bernardino Mountains, the Saga of the San Bernardinos. In 1966, Pauliena is facing the deadline of the opening of fishing season to finish the research on her book. She succeeds in finishing three months of research in San Bernardino before she and her husband, Cecil, left to be in the Sierras before the May 1st opening day. Cecil had just retired, and his passion was fly-fishing. They often backpacked to remote streams, sometimes renting horses to get farther into the backcountry to fish. Cecil loved the outdoors and would often spend weeks fishing, without a hat, feeling the sun and the wind whistle by him. The book project she felt compelled to write grew larger and larger. She said, _I realized I had too much information to write about Lake Arrowhead only and it needed to be about the whole mountain as so much was interconnected._ _I decided to write it by year, and I checked every fact, used footnotes, and if I couldn_t find two sources for the information I didn_t include it,_ she once told me. The indexing took a lot of time, but made the information readily accessible to others. Pauliena submitted the book to publishing house Simon and Schuster, though a friend of hers, even though she didn_t have the photos ready yet. _The editor felt it was a worthy project, but didn_t believe the book would sell the necessary 2,000 copies required to make it profitable to the publisher,_ she said. Her book, Saga of the San Bernardinos, chronicles the history of the San Bernardino Mountains from earliest recorded times. Some Indian history is included (she was involved with the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club in the placement of the original Indian Rock Camp historical marker in the 1930s) as well as the stories of the Mormon settlement in 1851 and the building of the road into the mountains. Many details of the Sawmill Era and Joe Tyler_s diary from the years 1872-1874 were included in Volume One to give an everyday taste of life during that era. The building of the dam that created Lake Arrowhead through the Little Bear Lake years, and through the building of Lake Arrowhead Village by the Arrowhead Lake Corporation, including the development of the initial mountain resort communities filled Volume Two. She intended to write another volume covering from 1930 through 1960, but wanted to get what she had finished published first. Gerald Smith, director of the San Bernardino County Museum, was anxious to publish it, in two volumes totaling over 650 pages. Pauliena had typed the manuscript on her manual typewriter, single-spaced. The distinctive drawings on the chapter pages were hand-drawn by Pauliena_s son-in -law (the originals are currently on display throughout the communities). She personally sought pre-printing subscriptions to the book and support of the San Bernardino County Museum to help with its cost. It was first published in November 1971. There were 350 of that first printing of 500 that were pre-sold at $11 each. The first printing was promoted by the women_s club and the Crestline Firemen_s Wives Club and sold out within three weeks of publication. The next year, 1972, Dick Stewart (who owned the Timberline Journal) published another 500 copies, 100 of which were hardback copies. Pauliena made sure all the descendants of those early pioneers she discussed had signed personal copies of her book. She donated copies of the books to libraries and schools. During those years, she wrote articles for the Timberline Journal. A leaky roof destroyed the plates to that second edition, eliminating the chance at a third edition by Stewart (Dick was married to Ann Henck, the daughter of Joseph and Mary Putnam Henck, who started Sky Forest) Part 5 of 5 11/12/09 Since writing her two-volume historical book, Saga of the San Bernardinos, in 1972, Pauliena LaFuze has continued to be active, speaking to local groups and continuing her writing. In 1982, she documented the history of the Worthwhile Club for its 50th anniversary. She always donated copies of her work to the Lake Arrowhead Library, so everyone could read them. Because of her interest in history and her involvement with education, in 1976 she wrote a bicentennial play for Rim of the World High School. She also helped found the Rim of the World Branch of the American Association of University Women (AAUW). In May 1984, another 1,500 hardbound copies of both volumes bound together were printed (now 650 pages long). It was published by the Museum Association and distributed by the Rim of the World Association of University Women, resulting in a Resolution of Commendation from the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. When the Crest Forest Historical Society began in 1986, Pauliena, 81, was a charter member and readily shared her knowledge. She said, _Call me Pauliena, not Mrs. LaFuze; that makes me sound so old._ When her husband, Cecil, became ill with skin cancer and it infected his eye, Pauliena cared for him until his death in 1991. _It is suspected he got the cancer from the years he spent years out of doors, but he got it doing the fly-fishing he loved; he would never wear a hat,_ she said. Pauliena spoke to the visiting Elderhostel programs in the _90s. She wrote a Sawmill Era curriculum for Lake Arrowhead Elementary School and put on her pioneer dress to share her love of local history with the kids. She wrote numerous articles, including one for Westways Magazine. For years she worked on a third volume of her book, extending it through the 1970s. She was generous with her information and encouraged others, including myself, to become involved in writing history. In 1993, the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club added a new plaque in Switzer Park, honoring LaFuze, 87, for her research and book. When the Crest Forest/Rim of the World Historical Society opened a museum in Lake Arrowhead Village in the mid-1990s, she cut the opening ribbon. In May 2003, at age 98, she received an Individual Award of Merit from the California Conference of Historical Societies. After the disastrous 2003 Old Fire, on a foggy April morning in 2005, the Lake Arrowhead Women_s Club had Pauliena planting a tree at Switzer Park just like she had done 60 years before. Wielding a shovel, she said, _If it_s my tree, I want to plant it._ She spoke about the legacy of Sara Switzer and how ironic it was to be planting trees in the same area, again. _It is amazing, I never thought I_d last longer than the trees,_ she said. On a large boulder next to the tree she planted, on a bluff overlooking the valley below, is that quote. The Women_s Club held a barbecue and plaque dedication ceremony at Switzer Park in May 2006, dedicating the plaque on the boulder, and of course presenting Pauliena with another plaque for her crowded wall. She said she was just fulfilling the club_s motto, _Preserving the past, planning for the future._ In 2005, for her 100th birthday, she was honored with at least three mountain birthday parties put on by the Worthwhile Club, Women_s Club and the Senior Citizens Club, all of which appreciate her loyal active memberships. The Rim of the World Historical Society held a gala with over 100 attending, including all the historians who had been inspired by her: John W. Robinson, Tom Core, Stan Bellamy, Rhea-Frances Tetley, Roger Hathaway and Robbie Robinson. At the party, Tom Core presented Pauliena with the full-color cover of the fourth edition reprint of the Saga of the San Bernardinos. Pauliena LaFuze, now 104, is still active and visits the mountains whenever she can, having moved away a few years ago to be out of the snow and living closer to her daughter. | |
| Birth* | 3 October 1905 | She was born on 3 October 1905 at 14th & Chase Sts, Anderson, Madison Co., Indiana. |
| Marriage* | 31 August 1934 | She married Cecil LaFuze on 31 August 1934 at California. |
| Death* | 3 January 2011 | Pauliena B. Gaither died on 3 January 2011 at California at age 105. |
| Burial* | 7 January 2011 | She was buried on 7 January 2011 at Pomona Valley Memorial Park, Pomona, Los Angeles Co., California. |
Family | Cecil LaFuze b. 1905, d. 1991 | |
| Last Edited | 23 Jan 2011 |
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