The 86-year-old woman, who received the notice from state parks, is now staying at a convalescent hospital, but hopes to return to the motel.
By David Wallace/Special to The Malibu Times
Last December, Malibu’s Something’s Fishy restaurant became a victim of the California Parks and Recreation Department’s plan to create a nature preserve and park in Lower Topanga. At the time, Ichiro Masui, the restaurant’s general manager, was philosophical about the closure: “Nothing is forever; everything has a time,” he said. Like several other businesses, including the Topanga Ranch Market, and residents of more than two-dozen homes, they decided that it was better to take the relocation funds than fight.
However, on Feb. 17, the state parks department plan was personified in a way more difficult to treat so philosophically. On that date, not only was an eviction notice sent to the Topanga Ranch Motel, another was sent to 86-year-old Aneta Siegel who has lived in the motel for 53 years. And, her notice wasn’t sent to the motel; it was delivered to the Santa Monica convalescent hospital where she is recovering from major surgery.
“I’m 86, and I’ve just been ’86ed,” Siegel, frail but highly alert, snapped during a recent visit.
As has been reported earlier in The Malibu Times, the action stems from the 2001 purchase by the state parks department of 1,659 acres of Lower Topanga land from the Los Angeles Athletic Club Organization for $43 million for the creation of a continuous park stretching from the mountains to the sea. Although not finalized, interim plans for the site include the creation of nature trails, restoration of native fauna and flora, and the restoration of the original wetlands at the outlet of Topanga Creek, one of only 10 percent of Los Angeles waterways free of sewage pollution. The parks department claims the result will benefit both visitors and the local wildlife.
Despite relocation compensations ranging up to $250,000, many of the residents who have been or will be displaced don’t see anything beneficial about the plan. Siegel, for example, has been offered $49,000.
“What will I do with that?” she asked. “Where will I go?”
The eviction deadline is June 4. However, Ray Craig, manager of the 30-room motel for the past 19 years, said, “I received two eviction notices, but nothing has gone to court. We’re going to sit right where we are until matters are resolved.”
There are also those who doubt the park will ever be built because the present state of budget limitations. Hayden Sohm, Malibu area superintendent for the parks department, said, “The budget for next year hasn’t been finalized, but in view of the current state of the economy whether it will happen is anyone’s guess.”
Bernt Capra, a longtime Topanga resident and co-chair of the Topanga Community Association, has a broader view. Last year, he estimated that doing everything the parks department was planning would involve moving some 900,000 cubic yards of material that was used more than 100 years ago to fill in the land where the Topanga Ranch Motel now sits. It could also involve putting PCH on stilts to allow for a free exchange of tidal waters between the creek and the lagoon. “You cannot bring back paradise,” Capra said at the time. “It is impossible to turn back the clock 150 years.”
Which leaves Siegel, who moved into her $30-a-month two-room unit in 1951, up in the air. At the time, the New York born Siegel had recently arrived from Europe where she spent much of her early life working as a secretary in the American Embassy in London when Joseph Kennedy was ambassador, and where she attended London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. ” I wanted to be the world’s greatest actress,” she reminisced. “Then I discovered philosophy, especially ethics.
“My UCLA counselor said that it would get me bread and butter, but it would never buy me cake,” she laughed. But, like many such plans, hers didn’t work out quite as she hoped, and she ended up making her living by “doing everything” as a secretary, a bookkeeper and working in radio.
The radio work came naturally. Before coming to California, Siegel also served with the Women’s Army Corps, producing three radio shows for the Armed Forces Network in occupied Berlin. One of them was an interview show where she scored a triumph for the time in having representatives of all four occupying powers on a panel. Another was a DJ show, and the name of the stuffed lamb next to her bed in the hospital, “Divey,” is a reminder. The name is derived from the nonsense lyrics of a song popular in 1943, “Mairzy Doats,” played often on her Berlin radio show.
“I first came to California with my family when I was seven,” Siegel said, her sky-blue eyes glittering with the memory. “We stayed in some hotel down on Hoover Street. There was a flower stand across the street and I remember I was able to go over and buy a long-stemmed rose for my mother. It cost a nickel.
“I made a vow at the time,” Siegel continued. “Anyplace where I could get a rose for a nickel was where I wanted to live.”
Whether fate-or the state-will allow her to continue to do is uncertain.