Meet the ‘Mayberrys’

Few residents have roots as deep in Pacific Palisades as Rich and Deann Wilken. Rich Wilken is often called the Andy Griffith of Pacific Palisades, an apt moniker for a guy hugely invested in maintaining the town’s ‘Mayberry By the Sea’ character. When it comes to community boosterism and involvement, only his wife, Deann, comes close as a rival. The couple, married for 33 years, are lifelong Palisadians. Their family history overflows with real-life versions of Floyd’s Barbershop. Many relatives marked an early stake in the Palisades with family-owned businesses. Rich’s father, famous for his elaborately designed wedding cakes’and even more so for being William Randolph Hearst’s personal pastry chef–ran John’s Pastry Shop in the 1950s. His mother later operated the Patio Coffee Shop. Deann’s grandparents owned the Lindomar Lodge, a hub for celebrities of the day and a favorite spot of a young U.S. senator named John Kennedy. Another grandparent of Deann’s owned Blanche’s Beauty Salon, while her father ran a popular pet shop known as Mr. Poo’s in the Wilson Building (now Gelson’s parking lot). The relaxed, down-to-earth couple seem to take all these heady bygone days’and everything else’in stride. During an interview in their home, a cozy one-story on Edgar Street where they raised two children, daughter Heather, now 29, and son Matthew, 27, they spoke candidly about the current scene in their beloved hometown. ‘Because of the tremendous price of homes and the sacrifice being made, some of the new people, certainly not all, come in with a sense of entitlement,’ Rich says. ‘You see it while waiting in line and especially at school, a certain ‘me’ generation attitude. After a while, I hope they’ll mellow out, ‘ he adds. ‘You can’t give them a rule book about how to behave in the Palisades, although we’d like to.’ If he could issue a rule book, what would it say? ‘Be a normal person, we don’t care who you are, stand in line, have fun, and say hello,’ he replies without hesitation. Their first grandchild, Kendall, their daughter (Heather’s 3-year-old) is a fifth generation Palisadian. They’re eager to keep the Palisades the same family-friendly place for her that they grew up in. ‘Despite inevitable changes, I think the town still has that homey feeling,’ says Rich. ‘We still have the Fourth of July celebration and all that other corny stuff we love to do.’ Rich, an architect, is no small part of the town’s Independence Day celebration. Many locals know him as the freewheeling commentator stationed outside Starbuck’s along the parade route. For 25 years, he has also coordinated the town’s big fireworks display. His history with the parade dates back to when he was 14 and rode with his junior baseball team. By parade time, his coach hadn’t arrived to drive the team station wagon, so Rich got behind the wheel and drove the entire parade route himself, waving to disbelieving friends and neighbors. ‘I didn’t kill anyone, but I did get into trouble,’ he says. Rich, the youngest of three boys, grew up on Albright, a block from Temescal Canyon. ‘There were 21 kids within one year of each other in age,’ he recalls. ‘As a group, we were either playing baseball, skateboarding, or packing a sandwich for a day in the canyon spent throwing dirt clods, hiking, playing army or looking for snakes. The only rule was to be home for dinner.’ Meanwhile, Deann’s family lived on Castellammare, just a stone’s throw from the ocean, and from the family-owned Lindomar Hotel, located at the corner of Sunset Blvd. at Castellammare Dr. (where Spectrum Gym is now situated). She remembers hanging out at the beach with her friends and spending the entire day in the water. ‘I couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t go swimming until I was 16 or 17 and didn’t want to get my hair wet,’ she says with a laugh. In the days before bands of paparazzi began lurking on every corner, the Lindomar hotel played host to any number of celebrities’Montgomery Clift, Howard Hughes, Raymond Burr, Edgar Bergen and Leif Erickson were among them. John Kennedy sought refuge from his rowdy ‘Rat Pack’ friends at the hotel during visits to California. His signature on the guest register is a treasured family keepsake. Rich’s family can boast equal brushes with fame. His father, John, who emigrated from Germany in 1927, spent eight years in San Simeon as the personal pastry chef for William Randolph Hearst. He later became head pastry chef at Ocean House, the former mansion of Hearst’s longtime girlfriend, Marion Davies, in Santa Monica. Hearst and Davies loved throwing lavish theme parties and John Wilken grew famous for the cakes he created to complement these events. One such confection was an elaborate replica of Independence Hall in Philadelphia for Hearst’s 75th birthday. The huge cake, fully illuminated with every architectural detail carefully carried out, was wheeled out at the stroke of midnight amid an early American-themed costume ball at Davies’ Santa Monica beach house. John Wilken died when Rich was only 15, but he remembers a few of his father’s stories about stars and shenanigans at Hearst Castle. One such episode involved Charlie Chaplin, who loved to mimic the monkeys Hearst kept as part of his menagerie. One the animals got fed up with this and threw fecal matter at the star. Rich and Deann met at the Lutheran Church as teenagers. Both attended local schools (he attended Palisades Elementary, she went to Marquez) and graduated from Palisades High (Rich was part of the high school’s first graduating class in 1964). They remember the community as possessing a more distinct blend of upper, middle and working class people than it does today. ‘I didn’t realize there were really wealthy people here until I got to Revere and attended birthday parties featuring private movie screenings at people’s homes,’ Deann says. ”Oh,’ I thought, ‘this is different.’ Even so, they were just our friends.’ Deann’s lifelong affiliation with Marquez Elementary includes directing the STAR educational enrichment programs there for close to 20 years. This follows years of volunteer activity, during which she received every pin in the PTA arsenal. She also oversees STAR programs in Topanga, Brentwood and Santa Monica Canyon and participated in the quest by Palisades schools to achieve charter status. In addition to his role as ‘Mr. Fireworks,’ Rich has been enthusiastically engaged in virtually every volunteer arm of the community. He served as a charter member of the Palisades Design Review Board and twice as president of PAPA. He’s headed the Palisades Lutheran Church congregation and plays a big role with both the Optimists and the Boy Scouts. Wedged into his busy volunteer schedule is work as a practicing architect based in a home office. Mort’s Deli, the Lutheran Church sanctuary and the remodel of St. Matthew’s Parish Center are among his many projects. Keeping true to California roots, he also founded Wilken Surfboards, a company well known for custom designing boards. Soon the family will travel to Hawaii where son Matt will be married on April 20. Though both Rich and Deann have traveled throughout the world, they’ve never considered living anywhere but here. Deann is already anticipating that sweet moment of return. ‘It’s nice to come through that tunnel in Santa Monica and see the ocean and say ‘Okay, I’m home.”