CITY FOCUS:Family’s ties to Laguna run deep

Caden Stewart, 4, is a fifth-generation Lagunan — well, maybe 4½ generations — his great-great-grandparents only owned a vacation home here.

As Mother’s Day approaches, his mother, Liza Stewart reflects, with pleasure that her son attends the same elementary school that she did, walks the same streets, goes to the same beaches and plays in the same parks.

As Caden clambered on Rocket Ship II in Bluebird Park on Wednesday, Stewart reminisced about her family’s history in Laguna. Her father, Phil Interlandi, and his brother were famous cartoonists, but it was her mother’s family that settled here in the early 1900s.

Question: What brought your family to Laguna?

Answer: My great-grandparents, the Whipples, had a beach house — really a shack — on the corner of Oak Street and what is now Wilson Street. In those days, Wilson was called Whipple Lane. My maternal great-grandmother, Bessie Ball Mays, also was a frequent visitor to Laguna. She wrote poetry illustrated by her daughter, Elizabeth.

Q: What is Elizabeth’s story?

A: Elizabeth was born in 1907 and died in 1976. She met my grandfather, Arthur Whipple Jr., in Laguna Beach and they were married here on March 15, 1927. They owned a print shop and published a magazine called the Racket here during the Great Depression. I still have some copies. The title of a story in one of the 1931 editions was “Laguna Beach — A City of Doers.” That cracks me up — it’s just like Laguna today.

Q: Who did the artwork?

A: That was my grandmother, Elizabeth, for whom I was named, although the only ones who ever called me that were my teachers. She had a booth at the Sawdust [Festival], and I used to sit with her. She did a lot of nudes, and I remember being kind of embarrassed.

Q: The next generation?

A: My mother, Phoebe, was born in 1932. She and her sister, Judy, lived with my grandmother in a house on Johnson Street — that is now Shadow Lane. My mother married Daniel Leroy Shull, a local lifeguard and surfer, when she was 18. They had a son, Daniel Leroy Shull Jr., and later divorced. Danny still lives in town in the Bluebird Canyon home my parents built, one of the first on that side of canyon.

Q: How did your parents meet?

A: At an audition at the Laguna Playhouse. After my mother finished her audition, she sat back down in the audience. My father leaned back and said if she had done it as he instructed, she would have gotten the part. She did anyway.

He came to Laguna in 1950. It’s a pretty well-known story that he was driving down the coast from San Francisco, stopping along the way in places like Carmel. When he got to Heisler Park, he said, “This is it.” My parents married in 1956 in Las Vegas. She gave up a promising career as an actress to be Mrs. Phil Interlandi. When they divorced, she went back to school and got her nursing degree.

Q: What was it like growing up in Bluebird Canyon?

A: I remember running through the empty hillsides, picking mustard greens and freezing them — a custom of my father’s Sicilian-born mother, Mary. There were horses and chickens and one really loud donkey and a rooster that crowed every morning. My brother, Danny, remembers playing in the avocado grove that is now Bluebird Park.

Q: Did your father’s fame affect your childhood?

A: My father and my uncle were internationally famous cartoonists, published in major magazines, but that didn’t have much effect on me when I was young.

I know my parents had celebrities at the house, but the one that most impressed us was “Mr. Clean.” I remember my parents hosted a party for Bette Davis in 1960 just because she was feeling down. My mother, who volunteered for many years at the Pageant of the Masters and directed it in 1959, had met Bette there. In her typically dramatic way, Bette swept in and said, “Who is that adorable blond boy? He must come and play with my son.” That was Danny.

Q: What do you consider your family’s legacy to you?

A: An artistic heritage — I consider landscaping, which is my business with my husband, Steve — to be an art. But my family also strongly believed in community service. My mother fought for people’s rights. She fought for low-cost housing. My father hosted a benefit party every New Year’s Eve for the Free Clinic, now the Community Clinic.

Q: When did you marry Steve?

A: 1996. Caden was born in 2002.

Q: What changes have you seen that you hate?

A: I definitely hate the pollution of our ocean and the deterioration of the sea life. In high school, we used to find abalone and [California] lobster that you can’t find any more. It’s a big thing for me. I hate that neighbors can’t get along.

And I also am not happy about the cost of real estate. It makes it impossible for artists or worker bees to live here. Oh, and people trying to get rid of trees. Laguna is a bird sanctuary. We have to have trees. I was worried at first about Treasure Island, but I like the way it turned out and that it opened the beach to the public.

Q: What do you love?

A: There’s not much I don’t like about Laguna. When I was young, I believed I would grow up and leave this little town. But here I am, bringing up another generation.