Palisades Golden Couple

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER | Pali Life Editor

Marriage, even under the best of circumstances, is not often easy.

So try 70 years on for size as Hal Vieau, 94, a retired engineer and World War II Navy veteran, and wife Beverly, 89, celebrate their big 7-0 on July 27.

“It’s such an oddity now to be together [that long],” said oldest daughter Jan Salvaryn.

“They really love each other,” said son Jerry Vieau. “He wrote her every single day when he was out on that ship for a year.”

The Vieaus have three grown children: Vieau, also an engineer and military veteran who resides in Newport Beach; Salvaryn, who has five children and works as a global account manager at a Century City-based compliance company; and Joan Vieau Joss, who lives up in Menlo Park, California and has three children.

“They do everything together, they can’t imagine doing anything apart,” Vieau said. “They loved to entertain. Dad’s incredibly outgoing and generous, Mom is just fun to be around.”

“Dad has always been there for Mom, through her polio [and when] they lost a couple of children,” Salvaryn explained. “He’s just been steadfast, just her rock. That’s been very obvious to us as we’ve grown up.”

A Santa Monica native, Beverly attended Santa Monica High School. By the time World War II was winding down, she was a sophomore at UCLA when she met Hal, a dashing Navy pilot from Minneapolis stationed at Coronado who had fought many battles during the international entanglement and served as a torpedo bomber at Leyte Gulf and other conflicts in the Pacific theater.

In 1947, after graduating from St. Regis in Denver, they came out to Pacific Palisades, where Beverly’s father owned an old duplex on Northfield Street. Over the years, the Vieau family would live in residences on three Palisades streets: Northfield; Swarthmore; and Whitfield, in the hills where Monument and Via de la Paz converge.

Post-military, Hal worked as senior engineer at General Telephone in Santa Monica.

According to Vieau, his parents are descendants from some colorful early North Americans: Hal’s ancestor, a French-Canadian food trapper, founded Milwaukee; on the former Beverly Brewster’s side, her father ran the long-running Brewster’s Food Bar on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica and she is also a descendant of a minister on the Mayflower.

Vieau attributes his parents’ long lives to healthy Palisades living.

“She’s really a good cook, they eat well,” Vieau said. “She was always a Jack LaLanne fan.”

This, despite Bev surviving polio and enduring an iron lung.

Hal and Bev have always been very involved in town, both civically and socially.

“Dad’s been the president of the American Legion [Post 283], he’s been president of the Optimist Club and an usher at Corpus Christi,” Vieau noted.

The local Catholic church is a big deal to the family. Both daughters were married at Corpus Christi.

Bev served as president of the women’s auxiliary of American Legion Post 283, and Salvaryn said her parents belonged to “The Terrible 10,” a card-playing group: “They didn’t really play bridge. They kind of hung out.

Hal knew Ah Wing Young, the owner of House of Lee (today Pearl Dragon), the first restaurant in the Palisades to serve liquor, and Vieau’s Palisades High School teacher, the late Rose Gilbert.

“He introduced me to the cook and the people in the back room who planned the function,” Vieau said.

On the walk to church to go to mass, Hal would shake hands with the homeless guy sitting in front of the now-defunct Bay Drugs.

“He feels for the common guy,” Vieau said.

Hal, who has always been involved with the Palisades-Will Rogers 5/10K Run on the Fourth of July, and Bev were among the subjects of a recent documentary on the Palisades parade.

This year, after decades of giving to their fellow Palisadians, the Palisades gave back to the Vieaus. In this year’s Fourth of July parade, Hal, as one of six veterans honored, rode as a parade marshal.

“The Fourth  of July is always a big deal,” Vieau said, and this year was no exception, as members of the Vieau family converged on the family home for a big ol’ pool party.

Last year’s anniversary celebration will be hard to top.

“They renewed their wedding vows [at Corpus Christi] last year,” Vieau said.

So this year, the Vieau offspring are planning a small celebration at their Palisades home, where their parents have 24-hour care.

Vieau, who turns 69 this year, has been married for 38 years and his sister Joss has also been married for decades. But the longevity of their parents’ union doesn’t pressure them, it inspires them.

“Their thing is so special, you just thought that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Vieau said. “You don’t realize how hard it’s supposed to be.”