If Camille Gavin’s life story is a stage production, it begins with a happy childhood shrouded in tragedy, then reconstructed with a pleasant twist before the intermission to bring audiences to their feet in the triumphant third. The curtain reaches its climax.
When my mentor, a longtime columnist in California, author of several books on local history, and a mentor of mine, died on October 12th, she long ago left the area in a less vibrant world. He was a local lover of theatre, visual arts, music and books. Support for art. But Camille has always appeared in plays, museum openings, lectures, sometimes alone, and with her column, she has been so kind as to open our minds and souls to the culture around us. caressed us gently.
And when her health began to deteriorate, Camille’s decades-long first night wasn’t lost.
“It was her goal to live to be 90,” said Christie Gavin, Camille’s daughter. “We had her birthday party in July. I asked her if there was anything on this planet that kept her here. She said no. She said many times that she had a very good life.”
Camille Royce Beatty Gavin was born in Bakersfield on July 16, 1932 and died in the same city 90 years later. The life she led, or rather the life she led, was marked by so many new beginnings and second acts that it was difficult to keep track.
“I’ve had a very complicated life,” she said in 2011.
Born at 2615 Eye Street, she moved with her family to the historic Oleander neighborhood as a child and attended Franklin and William Penn Elementary Schools, Emerson Middle School and Bakersfield High School.
In 1944, aged 12, her idyllic childhood came to an end with the sudden death of her father, Pete, on her 44th birthday. Her mother, also known as Camille, did her best to raise Camille and her older sister Suzanne on her own, but by the time her baby left to marry Timothy Gavin at 18, the It took her only a few years. The Korean War has begun and perhaps portends a troubled marriage for the couple.
“The day after Christmas 1974 I left home with a typewriter and a hair dryer,” Camille told me in 2011 of her profile I wrote for The Californian.
The courageous decision as a mother of three to start over from scratch was largely unknown at the time, her daughter said.
“She took risks each time she reinvented herself. I really admire that.”
At the age of 36, Camille graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences and eventually a Master’s degree in Education in Bakersfield, California.
After working as a librarian for five years, Camille began a long association with Californians in 1975 when she was hired as a feature writer for what was then called the Scene Section, the predecessor of today’s iStreet.
At that time, only five of the 30-35 press staff were women, including Camille. Her third floor, where the newsroom was, didn’t even have a women’s restroom, so Camille started a petition for all men to sign, resulting in equal access, at least on plumbing issues. .
“It was actually not that bad,” Camille said in 2011. its late out. He didn’t say it was because you were a woman, but that was it. “
In 1976, she and several newspaper colleagues founded the Arts Council of Khan, an advocacy and education group that is still active today.
She left The Californian in 1988 to become director of public relations for KGET-TV, and moved to San Diego the following year to be closer to her grandchildren. She returned to Bakersfield in her 2001 and she resumed her weekly art column in Californian. There she had her finger on the city’s faint cultural pulse.
“I realized that Californians, at least for me, needed someone to talk about art,” she said in 2011.
When I took on the editorial role of iStreet in 2005, the theater community was quick to let me. I asked Camille what she thought.
“Oh, Jennifer, you’ll never make theater people happy.”
Maybe not, but Camille had an essential understanding of the media’s role in reporting art in a city the size of ours.
“Her ego wasn’t involved. 1, and she didn’t approach the local theater the way she did on Broadway,” said Christy Gavin. I pointed out what I thought would be helpful in terms of improvement.It wasn’t about her.”
During the last fifteen years of her life, Camille was active in Rosewood Senior Living, served on the Resident Council, and never stopped writing. Her childhood episodes are a favorite topic of published authors, whose books include “Khan’s Movers and Shakers,” “How the Road Runner Got the Red Spot and Other Yokutsu Myths.” ‘, ‘Biddy Mason: A Place of Her Own’ and ‘Dear Cora’. : A Personal History of Early Bakersfield.”
In her final column for The Californian, dated December 3, 2014, Camille bids three final farewells under a preview of “Winter Wonderettes” and a wildlife photography exhibition at the Stars Theater restaurant. Last item.
“One of my greatest rewards has been seeing how interest in the arts has grown in Bakersfield, in part because audiences have become more sophisticated,” she wrote. increase. “The offerings have become more innovative and the talent more professional, especially in music and theater and, to some extent, the visual arts.”
And for that, Camille Gavin could have bowed if her ego allowed it (but it didn’t). There is none.
Camille has children Christie, Janine, and Daniel (Cindy), several grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.
Christy Gavin, who retired from CSUB after a 40-year career as a librarian, said instead of flowers, her mother sent gifts to friends at the Walter W. Stiern Library, the college Camille has supported for years. He said he would have liked it.
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