Nearly every day for the past 52 years, Lorraine Oshins has awoken to the sound of ocean waves crashing down on the beach below her home. From her bedroom balcony, her living room, her kitchen and her kitchen-adjacent sundeck she has a sweeping view from Palos Verdes to the coastal mountains in Malibu. Along with the view comes a nice breeze of fresh ocean air, a rarity in most parts of Los Angeles. Lorraine’s home, where she lives with her husband Ned, is hidden away in what she calls, ‘an obscure little corner of the Palisades’ at 283 Trino Way, just above the Bel-Air Bay Club. “The views of the ocean and beaches are spectacular from most of the residences on Trino Way,” Lorraine says. “Until recently, we knew most of the other residents in the neighborhood. It was truly a little island unto itself, unknown even to many other Palisadians.” Now, as the Oshins prepare to move closer to the Palisades village, this hidden retreat is on the market, listed at $3,195,000. In addition to the incredible views, the home features three bedrooms, two bathrooms, the sundeck and balcony, hardwood floors, a wood-burning fireplace and lovely gardens. Before moving to Pacific Palisades in the early 1950s, Lorraine lived with her first husband, Aris Anagnos, in Santa Monica, where they paid a mere $75 per month for an apartment. Soon they were ready to move into a house and they began looking for homes in Pacific Palisades and Rustic Canyon. “Why do you want to live in the boondocks?'” their friends inquired, believing them to be a bit crazy. Lorraine knew then, as she reiterates today, that “there has always been a strong community feeling here, and that always appealed to us.” While still looking for the perfect house, Lorraine and her husband rented an apartment on Haverford for $109 per month, where they stayed for several years, and started a family. Soon, they found their dream home on Trino Way. “The minute we saw this one we knew it was what we wanted,” Lorraine says. “It was perfect.” Son Demos Anagnos was nine-months old when they moved into the house, and daughter Thalia Anagnos was born a few years later. Demos, who attended Palisades High for two years before transferring to the Cate School in Carpinteria, now lives in Thousand Oaks and works as an attorney. Thalia, who graduated from PaliHi in the early 1980s, is a civil engineer and a professor at San Jose State. The hillside home on Trino Way was built in 1953 by Lloyd Jones, who had built other houses in the vicinity and specialized in hillside construction. The home had been on the market for one year when Lorraine and her husband purchased it. A native of Atlanta, Lorraine attended Huntington College in Montgomery, Alabama, where she studied linguistics. After graduating in 1944, she joined the Navy and was sent to New York. “I thought it would be very romantic to do something like training aviators to the Navy,” Lorraine recalls, “but as soon as they found out I had a language background I was sent to Washington, D.C. to work for Naval Intelligence.” In the final year of World War II, she worked from D.C. as a cryptographer, using her skills in French, Spanish and German language to help break enemy codes. She continued working at the job for several years before applying to graduate school. Years before, in 1929, Lorraine had taken a train trip with her mother and siblings to visit her grandmother in Los Angeles, a trip she had enjoyed and always remembered, prompting her to apply to UCLA. “Coming to California was a treat. I was rather glad I got accepted out here,” Lorraine said. She relocated to Southern California in the late 1940s and attended graduate school at UCLA, where she received a master’s degree in French language and met her first husband, Aris Anagnos, who had escaped Greece during the Nazi occupation and then joined in the British Army during World War II before eventually moving to Los Angeles to complete his education at UCLA. In 1952, Lorraine began a 40-year career as a high school (and some junior high) language teacher in Los Angeles public schools. She retired in 1992 from Hamilton High School. In the mid-1960s, after divorcing Anagnos, Lorraine met World War II veteran Ned Oshins through mutual friends she knew from her involvement in various women’s groups. They were married in 1966 and have been living on Trino Way ever since. Originally from Escanaba, Michigan, Ned had traveled to California several times after the war to visit various family members. “We shed our overcoats, discovered wrestling on TV and found California a convivial place to spend the winter,” he wrote in an essay about his first visit. He relocated to Los Angeles, graduated from Cal State Northridge, and became a businessman who had his hands in various ventures over the years. When he and Lorraine met, he was manufacturing plastic bubbles that were used on the roofs of homes. Later he began a public relations firm that represented architects around Los Angeles. He then returned to manufacturing, this time items for gardens, mostly plant pots. He also operated a bookmobile that sold books all over California. His final job before retiring was as a traveling caterer, in which he operated several trucks and carts that visited large office buildings in Westwood and Brentwood at mealtimes. Now retired, the Oshins are ready to leave their fantastic hillside residence. At 83, Lorraine still climbs around in their backyard–a steep terraced hill ascending to Arno Way–weeding and taking care of the landscaping, a chore that she is ready to give up. Her efforts, though, have resulted in a beautifully maintained yard. During the first winter Lorraine lived in the house, there was nothing on the back hillside to keep it from slowly deteriorating. She quickly had a steel-and-brick wall installed at the base of the hill all around the house and another one in front. Careful attention was also paid to landscaping, resulting in a stable hillside that has survived El Nino storms and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Oshins will also be happy to give up the precipitous driveway that has become difficult to walk up and down, even though leaving the hillside means giving up their view. “It’ll be hard,” Lorraine admits, “but we’re getting to the point that we’re old and we thought a house in the village would certainly be better than a hillside lot.” The neighborhoods adjoining the business district seem an obvious choice for the Oshins, who spend every morning enjoying coffee with friends at Gelson’s or other cafes in town. Lorraine finds it hard to believe how much the village has evolved since she first arrived in Pacific Palisades. “The village has changed so much,” she says. “It used to be this tiny little village at the end of Los Angeles and nobody wanted to live out here.” Now, though, the Palisades has become a very popular residential destination. Currently on Trino Way, a large new house, complete with a basement, is being constructed. “It’s very shocking to me what they’re building,” Lorraine says. “This hillside is very delicate.’ Lorraine is further shocked, and admittedly disturbed too, that so many mansions are popping up in the community. ‘They’re building huge houses on lots that don’t accommodate them, giving the Palisades a different kind of look.” The Oshins have seen many other developmental changes in the Palisades, including the construction of Temescal Canyon Road from Sunset down to Pacific Coast Highway. “It was a beautiful canyon,” Lorraine says, “and I’m so sorry they ever did it.” She also is a bit weary of some newcomers, who she fears do not understand the principles on which Pacific Palisades was founded, principles she has been heavily involved in preserving. A former president of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society, Lorraine is a member of Palisadians for Peace and the Pacific Palisades Residents Association, and a past member of the Community Council. Regardless of new local trends, leaving the Palisades was never an option for the Oshins when they decided to put their house on the market. “It’s a friendly place,” Lorraine says, and she and Ned truly enjoy the strong sense of community that the town provides, as well as an established circle of friends and acquaintances and the close proximity to the beach, Malibu and Santa Monica. The Oshins hope to relocate to a home (with a flat yard) as close to the village as possible, preferably below Sunset. After some looking around they have found several prospects on Radcliffe Avenue, but are keeping their options open. In the meantime, they will continue to enjoy their breathtaking 180-degree view of the Pacific Ocean, remembering fondly the community they fell in love with, looking forward to remaining a part of it.
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