Mickey Gompf sits poised and smiling in her rocking chair, a book on Downton Abbey close by, a song sparrow singing in her backyard garden. She has lived here in the Palisades for as long as she has been subscribing to the Palisadian-Post – 61 years.
“We subscribed to the Post as soon as we moved to Pacific Palisades,” Gompf said. “It was how we got to know what was going on. I still love the Two Cents column best, and I think the new Street Talk will become very popular.”
Gompf said she is always fond of those who use the editorial page to hush the whiners.
“There’s a lot of whining around here and I’m glad when those people get chided once in a while. What’s there to whine about?” she said. “I’m lucky I can maintain my independence and stay in this house. I’ll be 92 next month. But then again, everybody makes it to 90 these days.”
Gompf and her now-late husband bought their Pacific Palisades home for $25,000 after driving cross-country in a Chevrolet Coupe they had been given as a wedding gift.
“It was the best investment we ever made. When we moved here, the house had just been built, and it was just a muddy street,” Gompf said. “It was just a bunch of houses stuck in the mud. It sure has grown a lot.”
The pair met while in college at Virginia Tech and married just before Gompf said goodbye to her new husband as he was deployed to North Africa during World War II. For two years the couple wrote letters back and forth, waiting almost a month for each new letter to arrive.
“George and I met at a dance. He had asked me to dance so that he could talk to me about another girl he was interested in,” Gompf said. “Well, after that he wasn’t interested in her anymore. I talked my mother into letting me get married my junior year.”
The couple headed west to make their home in Upper Bienvenida after Gompf’s husband returned from the war.
One of Gompf’s earliest memories of her neighborhood was seeing the original St. Matthew’s Parish be moved in two pieces down the road – and a little mishap along the way.
“The church was being moved in two pieces, and it got stuck in the mud, so in the meantime we met in the Veterans Hall, which is now the CVS building,” she said. “A lot of other buildings have changed since that time, too; the movie theater and the Hot Dog Show.”
But while the faces of many storefronts have changed over the last six decades, it’s the lack of familiar faces Gompf notices most.
“We used to see people we know at the grocery story all the time. Now there are so many people here I don’t know,” she said. “I remember seeing celebrities like Debbie Reynolds and Vivian Vance all around town. They didn’t worry about being mobbed or anything. They were just here with the rest of us.”
Raising two daughters in Pacific Palisades, Gompf had front-row seats for the first day of school ever at both Marquez Elementary and Palisades High School. She remembers the 100-year rain that filled the city with mud as well as the fires that pushed Palisadians from their homes. Gompf has weathered changes in the landscape and changes in the community over more than a half-century – she has seen it all.
“It’s amazing how much this town has grown. When the girls were young they could wander around anywhere in the Palisades and you didn’t have to worry. They could play and ride their bikes anywhere,” she said. “In those days, we were just a one-stoplight town.”
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