It’s About Community and Service

I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing LeRoy Scolari on June 29, 2021 in the Myra Manfrina Reference Room of the Lompoc Valley Historical Society in Lompoc, California. In true Lompoc spirit, we were joined by a few local friends: Barry Manfrina, Bobby Manfrina, Karen Osland, and Karen Paaske, all of whom grew up in the area and have an impressive knowledge of the community and its history. Lompoc is a place that cares about the future and is not opposed to change, but it tends to its past and knows the stories matter. There was a shared recognition of the importance of interviewing LeRoy, a native son who has been a dynamic contributor throughout his life. Still sharp at nearly ninety, LeRoy has a can-do attitude, a wry sense of humor, and many insights to share. He has long been a voice for good stewardship of the land, and he has an admirable record of service to others. Let’s dive right in:

My name is LeRoy Scolari. I was born on the 21st day of April, 1932. I was born at Nellie Sperber’s Sanitarium on the 100 block of South F. Half the town at that time was born there. Until the Lompoc Hospital opened in 1943, that was the place. My sister was born there. Adam Signorelli was born there. (I have one sister and one brother.)

My wife’s name was Joan Amos. She was originally from Kansas. (Joan and LeRoy were married for 53 years. Like LeRoy, she was actively involved in many civic organizations. She passed away in 2016.)

Cynthia: I always ask people how they came to be in the place they’re at. How did you come to be in Lompoc?

I came with it. My grandfather, Philip Scolari, came to the U.S. from Brione, Switzerland in 1872, landing in the Santa Cruz area. Soon after the land colony was formed, he came down here and looked around. He came back ten years later, in 1884, and we’ve been here ever since, in the Honda district. He was a dairyman. He went to Switzerland in I believe 1898 and was married to Maria Fancolli.

The dairy is long gone. It was on property that was taken for Camp Cooke. At that time, I’m not aware of anyone that challenged the price they received for the land. They took it, and that was it.

My father and mother originally lived in the Honda when they were first married. My dad started raising alfalfa for the ranch in the valley, and at the time I was born we were living at the corner of Legge and Ocean Avenue.

The dairy operation ended of course with the taking of land for Camp Cooke, but our neighboring property, still owned by the family, was sub-leased, kind of like share-cropping, to the Rizzoli family, who ran a dairy there until about 1950.

Cynthia: What has been your work?

I’ve been involved in the business ever since. I kind of accidentally got into commercial hay baling for a few years, simply because I had the equipment at the time. You go from one neighbor to the next and the next.

Now, the original homestead was at the base of Tranquillon Peak. That’s where my father was born. Myra has some information in regards to the Manfrina family that worked for my grandfather, Philip Scolari, in the dairy in the early days near Tranquillon.

Cynthia: I love how people in this area honor their history.

That’s one thing I worry about. There’s a lot of things that some of us know, and once we’re gone, it’s lost. I’ve always felt that history is important.

Cynthia: That’s why we’re doing this.

My grandfather and grandmother buried twins. Their firstborn. They died in infancy, very early. About 1899. They’re buried up there on the base. I tried to contact the base historian, but I never heard back.

I know where the house was. I can remember the house. She wanted them buried where she could look out the kitchen window and see the site, which was just across the creek from the house, under an oak tree. That’s all my dad ever said, that they were under an oak tree. When we went up there, with Adam Signorelli, who worked for me for years, we hunted up there and never found that spot. But we found two stone benches about six feet apart. We figured that had to be the site. There’s no other explanation for the benches that we saw.

Barry: When we went up there, we combed the whole area, looking for the site. They used technology to try to locate them afterwards, but they never found anything definitive.

My dad, Alfonso Scolari, was born up there in 1900. My uncle was born two years later.

The house is still standing up there at the end of Honda Canyon.

My dad built the house on the lower ranch from lumber taken from the original schoolhouse, the Honda School, which was on my grandfather’s property. Adam Signorelli went to that school.

Cynthia: What is your source of strength? How do you get through the hard stuff?

That’s a heavy question. I associated with people that were well dedicated, and I probably built upon that. I guess you can say I was industrious from an early age. During World War II I plowed a number of victory garden sites in town. I was only about eleven years old when I started doing that. My dad was a cattle dealer. He’d haul cattle to the union stockyards in Los Angeles for many years. Actually, to engage in that business, you had to have a license, which was rather rigorous, but my dad never chose to do that. Everything was a handshake. Your name and a handshake was enough. He would pick up the load of cattle at different places, transport them to L.A., go through the market, in his name, and then he would issue a check when he got back. That went on before the war, and continued all through the war. Also, during the war, you were not allowed to operate a truck empty one way, so my dad got into the lumber and building materials, so he always had a payload coming back, so he got into the lumber and the feed business. I still have some of the receipts from sales to different people around the valley.

Then I associated with Harry Sloan, a well-known cattleman here in the valley. I also associated a great deal with Roy Bland, a jack-of-all trades who was dedicated to helping people. He might be irrigating his crop, and someone would have a problem, he’d shut everything down, and say, “Let’s go take care of it.” I guess I developed some of that from there.

Cynthia: Do you feel like we’ve lost some of that sense of community, and helping one another?

We still have some, but not to the extent we used to. In each district, like the Honda district, we had a group of people who, when you worked the cattle there, or did anything, they were always there. Same way with the Jalama. That’s gradually falling apart. We no longer have many people in the Honda. We used to have a control burn association. I never participated too much in that. But all the ranchers would get together with the County Fire Department and run control burns, which we no longer have. It was a real organized, Range Improvement Association, not only for the valley but the whole North County.

Cynthia: Do you think we can restore some of this?

We have to. There was just a spirit of camaraderie. People helping their neighbors, and those neighbors helping the other neighbors. That was lost. For example, in the Honda, the last harvest after Camp Cooke took over, they used to have a fall end-of-harvest barbecue on the Hall Ranch. The fact is, I have a picture of my dad and my sister and one of the neighbors taken up there. It happened to be the day my brother was born, at a birthing center at 3rd and Walnut. (Susan Henning Van Clief opened a maternity home in 1914 at the corner of North 3rd St. and Walnut Ave.)

As you probably know, Lompoc was known as the mustard capital of the world for years. I had my first auto accident at the corner of D and Maple, which were two ruts in each direction, and the mustard was six or seven feet high on all corners, and I carefully stuck my nose out, and one guy came by and took my front bumper off. I was driving a 1935 Ford Pick-up.

Cynthia: What are you most proud of?

*Above:the Berkeley campus that LeRoy knew*

That’s a tough one. Well, I appreciated my education very much. I had the honor of having Dr. Glenn Seaborg as my physics professor at UC Berkeley and Dr. Joel Hildebrand as my chemistry professor. I developed a pretty close relationship with both of them. Somewhere in my files, I have a letter from Dr. Hildebrand. There’s three people at UC that inspired me:, Dr. Gordon Sproul, who was president of the university, Dr. Hildebrand, a chemist, and Dr. Seaborg, who was affiliated with the founders of the atomic bomb. My association with them gave me a lot of inspiration.

Things are not the same up there anymore. It fell to pieces in the 1960s. The whole community changed.

Cynthia: When did you go to UC?

1950-54

Karen P.: You graduated from Lompoc High? Did you have someone inspire you to choose to go to Berkeley?

In 1947, I was chosen 4-H All-Stars for the county. I went to a conference at Cal, and I had quite a tour of the campus. I guess I’m as proud of the fact that I was selected as one of the Diamond Star candidates, of which there were four. I was only fifteen at the time, so I was passed over for one of the older ones, but the opportunity I had to visit and tour the campus and so forth, and I set my goal. I guess it was kind of cast in stone that this is what I was going to do. I guess I was pretty proud at the time that I was one of the few that passed the Subject A examination on the first try, which is part of the entrance exam. Thanks to Mrs. Farris, the English teacher at Lompoc High, who I guess had done a good job with me.

Then, when I was at UC, I’d already joined the Oddfellows lodge here, and I became an associate member of the lodge up there, and eventually served as Noble Grand. I had the opportunity to associate with very fine leaders of the community up there at the time. That got my interest going. I went in the service in 1955, and in 1958 I was selected as Grand Color Bearer of the Oddfellows. It kind of piqued my interest and I was urged to run for Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge, which I did, and was elected in 1963. In 1964 I became Grand Master. So I served as State Grand Master in 1964 and ‘65. Then after that, I was selected as the National Representative to the Sovereign Grand Lodge, and I served there for about five years. That gave me the opportunity to meet people from all over the world, and also to attend conferences all over the United States and Canada.

I was one of the founders of the California Eye Bank, a major research foundation. I guess one of the inspiring things was my association with some of the primary doctors in the field. One of them was Dr. Ray Irvine at the Doheny Foundation in Los Angeles. We had an application from a woman who had been legally blind almost from birth, and she was in her late 70s at the time. She applied to see if we could do anything. We had a professorship at Johns Hopkins University. I received a report from her doctors and so forth and circulated it among the doctors here, and the word was that there really wasn’t anything that could be done. Then, one day, out of the blue, we get a call from Dr. Irvine.

He said, “About that patient you referred. We have a doctor here from Johns Hopkins, Dr. Silverstein, who’s gonna be here for about a month. He’s a specialist in this field. If you would like, he’d be willing to examine her.”

So I contacted her, and she went for it. Dr. Silverstein examined her. Next thing you know, he had an appointment set up to do surgery. Someplace in my files, I have a letter from her stating that she rode down the street and saw buildings and things she’d never seen before. That was such a thrill for her. And it did it for me, too, because of the contacts I had that helped make it happen. So that was one of the highlights of my time as president of the Eye Bank.

Note from Cynthia: I had a hunch that LeRoy was being modest and that there were likely many other accomplishments he had not enumerated in the course of our interview. In a subsequent phone call, he mentioned a few others:

In 1963, I chaperoned the United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth to the U.N. headquarters in New York City. We made the trip by chartered bus, setting out with a delegation from California, and stopping in Nevada, Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming to pick up additional delegates, before we were fully loaded. We were hosted by Oddfellow lodges along the way. These were all juniors in high school, attending U.N. conferences for a week and then touring the Northeast, an unforgettable experience for them. The youngest was only 15 years old. She was an outstanding student, and I remember her filling up her steno pads with notes, wide-eyed with wonder and curiosity. (She eventually became a metallurgical engineer.)

In 1964 and ‘65, I was the State Grand Master of the Oddfellows Lodge. From 1980 to 1992, I chaired the County Agricultural Element Committee. I served on the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Committee, the Rural Crime Advisory Committee, and for twenty years (and still on it) the Cachuma Resources Conservation District. I also served four years on the California Association of Resource Conservation District Board, was president of the Santa Barbara County Farm Bureau, and in 1987 was Santa Barbara County’s Cattleman of the Year. I am the senior past Grand Master of the Oddfellows, and recently, I received the honorable Veteran’s Jewel for seventy years of service to the Oddfellows Lodge.

Another note from Cynthia: I’m still not at all sure that the above constitutes an exhaustive list of the many ways LeRoy has stepped up to serve his community, and the many accomplishments of which he can be proud, but it gives you a pretty good idea of how he has lived his life.

Cynthia: Is there any message or advice you would like to offer to younger people?

Work hard. Build friendship and camaraderie with those around you. I think it’s important to meet with people at all levels.

One inspiration would be President Reagan. I had some association with him and his family when he was governor. You might say that the door was always open. I tried yesterday to contact the governor’s office. I went through about six different aides, or whatever you want to call them. The last one, leave a message. I still haven’t gotten a call back. Governor Wilson was another one, although we had a door-opener with him. He liked my wife’s fudge.

Just the difference! Brooks Firestone was another one, when he was Assemblyman. You could go up to his office, and he was there. You could call him any time after six in the morning, and he would answer the phone. It’s not the case anymore. We’ve lost that type of dedication.

Maureen Reagan (i.e., Ronald Reagan’s oldest daughter) was a very good friend of my wife. They first met at the California Women for Agriculture Conference. Maureen was a chip off the old block. She was in there working with the rest of them, just like anybody else. She died at the age of sixty from melanoma. It went fast–you don’t want to underestimate the power of melanoma. Anyway, we went to the funeral service in Sacramento and sat right behind the family. After the service, we went out on the steps of the cathedral, and Reagan’s first wife, Jane Wyman and his current wife Nancy, came out, and we were chatting on the steps, and the TV cameras picked us up. When we got home, my brother said, “What were you doing in Sacramento?” We hadn’t told anyone we were going. That’s one of the things I’d like the Historical Society to have when I find it, it’s stored in files...the invitation and the photo and the album that was given at the time.

Cynthia: What do you feel hopeful about?

What gives me optimism is how many real concerned people there are out there.

But I have a great deal of concern about our educational system. You might call it political, but we’re erasing history. History is history whether it’s good or bad. It’s important. For the bad, we need to work to do better. But we should not rewrite history.

When I was going to Cal, when I first got there, an 18-year-old kid from the sticks, here’s something that happened that shows the difference in the culture. I walked into the Bank of America to establish an account, the Berkeley main branch. I was met at the door by an older, portly gentleman in a three-piece suit who asked what he could do for me. I told him I was there to open an account. We chatted for a moment, he took me over to a teller, told the teller what I wanted, and said to take care of me. This man was the president, or the manager of the Berkeley main branch. He wasn’t sitting behind a desk, he was greeting the customers at the door. The thing that impressed me is that I never went back to that bank that I wasn’t called by my name. And here I was, an eighteen-year-old kid from the sticks, in the main branch of the Bank of America in the Berkeley community.

One time, I lived in North Berkeley, up in the hills, and sometimes finding a parking place on campus was a little difficult. You might have a class at the lower end of the campus and the other one might be at the upper end. I decided to walk to school. It was kind of a mistake, because I got there late. Everybody would be out in their yard, tending their roses or whatever, and you had to stop and chat. That kind of thing is lost.

I mean it was that kind of a community. After the 1960s, I felt so bad for my associates up there, what they were going through. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but at the present time, the majority, if not all of your professors in these colleges and universities are products of the sixties. That’s all I’ll say.

That sense of neighborliness has been lost. Even in this town, I don’t think you could do that to any great extent. Maybe you could do it a little bit, with one or two neighbors, but other than that, it’s gone. That wasn’t the case in my community at that time. I always thought of Berkeley that way. It was a big town, but it was the biggest little town.

LeRoy in his seventies. (Photo by Len Wood)

Cynthia: Emerging from global pandemic, forced into isolation, don’t you think for many people that has sort of revived an awareness of how much we need one another and how important community is?

I believe it has certainly helped. Now if they’ll just expand those horizons. I think that’s the big thing that needs to happen.

And worldwide. This disaster in Florida, for example, they had an Israeli team there helping out. We need more of that. That’s the kind of thing we need.

Unfortunately, in this country we’ve developed a...I don’t want to call it race-based because I believe that’s a misnomer...I’ll say a hatred of people with different opinions. And that should not be. Different opinions are welcome. But they should be treated as different opinions, and not influence the overall sense of camaraderie. I always remember a picture of Senator Moynihan and President Reagan...they had two distinct philosophies, totally different. They could sit and argue by the hour, and when they got finished, go out to lunch, put their arms together, and they were friends, friends with differences of opinion. We should not hate people with different opinions.

I think that’s one of the biggest obstacles we have today.

Cynthia: That possibly goes back to education...which is what you were talking about earlier. I think part of the reason people have become intolerant of one another is because some of the opinions are more like delusions. They’re not fact-based. I think we need to have a shared understanding of the facts, and then form our opinions based on that.

Yes.

Cynthia: I’m inclined to feel hopeful, though, because despair is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have to believe we can make it better.

I’m also concerned about attempts to create friction between races. It’s totally ridiculous.

Karen P.: Lompoc has always been a very diverse town. Certainly you grew up with all kinds of people. You knew them. You didn’t even think anything about it.

I know families here in the valley when the Japanese were evacuated, that held the possessions and in some cases took care of their land while they were gone.

I’ve had friends of all backgrounds, all races. I’ve had close relationships with them. All very positive. They do not subscribe to what’s going on in the name of racism, or whatever. Yes, there are places where actual racism exists. But you take the Mexican community here. Within their own group, they call each other wetbacks, and so forth, but in a joking manner, amongst themselves, always in fun. Now, if anybody says anything like that, it would be considered racism. I’m afraid that is being used to create strife.

Karen P.: Here in Lompoc, who are some of the real characters you’ve known?

Roy Bland, of course, was a character in his own right. I guess you could say he was a mechanical genius. He never showed it. Dr. Talbott...Eunice Talbott was another…

Karen P.: Can you tell us how you acquired the gas pumps from Al Johnson’s gas?

When he shut the station down, early 1950s, I can’t really remember, but it had to be very early. He had not only gas pumps, but a lot almost filled with 500-gallon tanks of all kinds. He had Mohawk, he had Seaside, he had all different kinds of gas. So he engaged me to remove things. I removed the pumps, and I dug out all of the storage tanks. We didn’t have the hazardous materials team there to see if some of them leaked. Anyway, we uncovered all of them, and hauled in some dirt to fill ‘em, and that’s how I acquired them. I had ‘em for a long time in what we called the barn behind my dad’s old house, and then when we tore that down, we moved them up to the ranch, and I’ve still got two up there. If you’ve got a place for ‘em, I’ll see that they get moved. There are three in the blacksmith shop. Myra gave me a picture of the station with Ferdinand out front, and those three pumps, I remember, are the ones that were in there at the time, before this late model that I have up there now. It’s a dial pump, and as I recall, if power went out, it had a hand crank. But anyway, you made a mention.

Cynthia: I want to make sure you give us the story of the wind farm.

Note: In its 2019 incarnation, this project would involve installation of 29 wind turbines of 3,000 acres in the hills south of Lompoc, with the goal of doubling Santa Barbara’s renewable energy production and provision of electricity needs for about one-third of the county’s households. The project, bordered by Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), private ranch land (Scolari), and the Dangermond Preserve, would additionally include an onsite substation, a meteorological tower, and a 7.3-mile transmission line connecting the site to the PG&E grid in Lompoc via a new switching station. There has been discussion of widening some sections of San Miguelito Road in order to transport the turbine blades, which are between 160 and 225 feet. Because of the unique location of the project in terms of geography, biodiversity, ecology, and geology, there have been many detours and complexities along the way. The current version of the project is being implemented by Strauss Wind LLC, an affiliate of a German company, BayWa LLC.

Sometime in 2000, I was contacted by this individual who went out and took a look at the situation and thought we should promote a wind farm. Okay. He took us on a trip to Tehachapi to view the one over there, see its operation, and so forth. Pretty soon we entered into a lease with this company that it formed a partner with. There’s been so many companies involved, I don’t remember the names of all of them. This one was a promotional company. They went out and found a Danish company interested in doing the project. They took over the lease and carried it for a couple of years. I hired an attorney that had done work for us when the Air Force took the property over on the coast at the back of the ranch. I engaged him and I got the first billing from him in 2002. Anyway, it went along, and pretty soon, they withdrew, and the Danish company gave up, and we had a Spanish company come in: Acciona. They were very industrious. They worked and worked and actually got their county permits. Of course, they still had to go through the state. After they saw the conditions, and the permits and so forth, they decided to walk. They had invested something like 9 or 10 million dollars in the project, and they walked.

Then the outfit that ended up with it was Cabrillo Wind Energy. They went up, and they brought in this German company, BayWa which is the company we have now. They come in real strong. They were gonna do everything. They got through the county permit process pretty well, and they’re the ones who are there now, but the stickler is the Department of Fish and Wildlife. They want conservation easements over the whole ranch. Conservation easements depend on how they’re drawn. Fact is, I’ve thought of putting the whole ranch under an easement held by the local land trust or the cattleman’s rangeland trust, which would simply say it would stay in agriculture in perpetuity, or whatever time is specified. Fish and Wildlife wants the conservation easement in perpetuity, and there are, I don’t know how many––I quit counting––but their conservation easement is on the average about fifty-seven pages, and there’s also a grazing management plan, and even the consultants have told them this is because we have the outstanding crop of Gaviota tarplant, which is considered endangered.

Endangered…we always called it invasive. This plant can be choked out by grass, but if you graze the grass down, it protects the plant, and the way the ranch has been managed for the past 134 years, it’s flourished beautifully. But State Fish and Wildlife wants to “manage” it. They want something like $315,000 a year as the revenue from an endowment fund for them to “manage” it. It’s been going back and forth ever since. I’ve got a meeting this afternoon at 1 o’clock.

I get a call one day from Larry up there, and he says, “There’s six people up here looking for ants.”

I ask, “What kind of plants are they looking for?”

He says, “No, ants. A-N-T-S. They’re going down by the adobe field.”

Then I talked to the project manager and she told me they were looking for Argentine ants. Because Argentine ants feed on the roots of the tar plant, and if they found any, the company would have to eradicate them, but remember, you can’t use pesticides.

Cynthia: Is this whole wind farm thing sort of being held hostage at this point?

They've been allowed under a special permit to go ahead and build the roads up there and so forth. They’ve done that. But they’re not able to build the pads. They’re ready to drill the holes.

Karen O: The cement trucks are going up today.

Yeah, but not for that. They’re going for other reasons.

Another part of the story–– I know, I’m wandering on this––the company has to remove, by hand, 30,000 tar plants. Take them down to the lay-down area, where they’re building a nursery.

Karen O.: I surveyed out there. I don’t think they have 30,000 tarplants. I’m questioning that one.

Oh, they counted all the tar plants. (Laughter)

I’ve got it in my documents someplace.

Anyway, they have to remove 30,000 and put it in this nursery, and take care of them until the project is complete and put ‘em back. My experience is if you want to grow tarplant, just scratch the ground, and they’ll show up.

Note: At this point, I wondered aloud what benefits might be expected from the proposed wind farm project. For an overview of the project and a glimpse into the kind of discussion it has generated in the community, here’s an audiotape of the conversation that ensued. (In the interest of accuracy, please note that LeRoy mistakenly refers to his grandson-in-law as the regional manager; he is in fact a customer relations manager.)

The story continues. We’ll follow along. But let it be known there is a community that cares, about the land, the future, and one another. My time with LeRoy made me think of another local rancher I have known, the late and beloved Bob Isaacson, who was also a poet, and these words of his came to mind:

I know as you know.
Be deep rooted,
even in shallow soil-
Roots will find.
You have given me to know
as you know
what will now suffice. Be nourished.
Dig deep.
Then deeper.

LeRoy Scolari has deep roots here. The land has shaped his soul; family and community have formed his character; and he does his best to be worthy.