Helping the community, and so much more

Yvonne Lorvan, working at her favorite pastime. Photo: Elinor Gale.

by Elinor Gale

Meet Yvonne Lorvan, a 50-year resident of Pacifica, who has devoted much time and energy to the town she loves. A multi-talented, accomplished woman, Lorvan exemplifies the dedicated Pacifican: independent, feisty, creative and civic-minded. Like many coast dwellers, she treasures the area’s beauty, plants and critters. A native Californian, Lorvan moved to Pacifica when her oldest child was 2.

Community Activism

Lorvan began her community activity at the Pacifica Co-op Nursery School, eventually serving on the board and representing the school at the state level. “It was fun to do volunteer work at that level,” Lorvan says. “It really expanded my horizons.”

This was the beginning of her long history of civic activism: initiating, participating in and organizing activities to benefit the community.

With nurse friends, Lorvan began a five-year vision-screening program for preschool and kindergarten children, testing for amblyopia, also known as “lazy eye.”

She is a board member of Pacificans Care, a fundraising group that supports a number of social services organizations: child care and senior services; the Pacifica Resource Center, a project of the Tides Center; and the Pacifica Youth Services Bureau. Pacificans Care receives contributions from the Pacifica Tribune’s holiday fund and raises money through events such as Pacifica’s annual Fog Fest, casino nights and garage sales.

Lorvan is also proud of her fund-raising as founder of the Co-op Nursery School wine and cheese tasting back in the early 1970s. Lorvan says of the first event, “We got the Danish Cheese Association to donate cheese, a winery to give us wine and Nick’s gave us the room, so the money we made from ticket sales was sheer profit.” The school now runs a Springfest that includes beer, wine, food and more.

Lorvan has a long history with the Pacifica Rotary Club and was elected president at age 70. “Amazing for a woman of my age,” she says.

Through the Rotary, Lorvan collaborated with an Ingrid B. Lacy Middle School teacher, Dolores Zacconi, to create a mentorship program enabling students to meet with people in careers of interest. “When students asked us why we did this, we said, ‘You’ll be the leaders of the future. We want you to be successful, see that doing something with your life is important, have a happy life and pass it on.’” The program won a prestigious J. Russell Kent Award. Lorvan now meets with a Rotary-sponsored exchange student to help ensure a positive experience.

Education and Work Life

Lorvan holding a Torah. Photo courtesy of Susanna Goldenstein.

When her youngest child was 2, Lorvan wanted to complete her college education but couldn’t persuade Skyline College to allow her and two other mothers to run a nursery school and daycare center for working mothers on campus. So instead, she persuaded her professors to allow her to bring her son to classes. She says: “He had drawing books and colored pens, sat in the last row, drew and paid attention. He learned French with an impeccable accent.” He also learned to sing in six languages!

“The two other women would also babysit while I was in school, and I would take their children for the weekend, so they could have a respite,” Lorvan says. “We managed that way and the kids loved each other. It was like having cousins.”

With the support of her voice teacher, Mildred Owen — the creative force behind Pacifica Performances and Pacifica’s Sanchez Concert Hall, renamed the Mildred Owen Concert Hall after Owen’s death in 2009 — Lorvan received a full scholarship to study voice at Mills College. When she graduated with a degree in music, she couldn’t find much money in singing locally. “I did a lot of solo work for churches, and Mildred and I did a number of chamber operas, which were really fun,” she says. Lorvan also began acting in theater pieces containing music at the Eureka and Lorraine Hansberry theaters.

Needing additional income, Lorvan found a job where she learned bookkeeping and did accounting research, which she found easy because of her graduate-level music research. “Music study is very much like auditing. I had to analyze symphonies. When I began bookkeeping I realized it’s the same thing. It’s like a giant spreadsheet.”

Lorvan has been in private bookkeeping practice for 30 years. “I can find pretty much anything that’s gone amuck in accounting because of my music research,” she says. Lorvan also runs a gift service, “Ooh, Just What I Wanted,” where customers can buy general albums containing a variety of gifts, or albums specific to gender or events. Recipients of the albums then order their choice of gifts online.

If that’s not enough, Lorvan has been knitting since age 8 when she made her first sweater, and she carries her gorgeous hand-knit scarves with her in a basket, ready for sales.

Spiritual Life

An active member of Congregation Beth Israel Judea in San Francisco, Lorvan recently became Bat Mitzvah with seven other women after two years’ intensive study that included learning Hebrew. Traditionally, the ceremony is a coming of age ritual at age 12 or 13. “At age 73, I read about Abraham in his 75th year being sent to do God’s commandment and saw I could accomplish something big in my spiritual life in my 75th year.“ Lorvan taught herself Hebrew so she could join the Bat Mitzvah study class and read her portion of the Torah, the holiest book of Judaism, flawlessly.

Love of Nature and Writing

Lorvan credits her father, who was in the forest service, for her love of nature. “He had keys to all the padlocks in the national parks. He taught me how to fish for trout, recognize different trees — showed me snakes, spiders, lady bugs, beetles and all kinds of things. I loved it all because it was so amazing,” she says.

Living on her grandmother’s ranch, Lorvan continued the “walk-abouts” begun with her father. She discovered the life cycle of the butterflies, marveled at birds, learned about rattlesnakes, fed the geese, ducks and chickens. Her grandmother ran a commercial pear orchard. “We had all the pears we could stand and more,” she says.

As a child, Lorvan developed a fascination with words and writing, particularly story-telling. Recently, she’s writing poetry celebrating nature and marvelous children’s stories about “Sky, the snail” who “skate boards on his sticky slime” and survives many scary adventures. Her writing has won awards at the San Mateo County Fair.

About Pacifica, Lorvan says, “I travel a lot and whenever we come home down the Edgemar grade or Sharp Park Road to Pacifica, I marvel at the view of my own city and think how beautiful it is here at home.”

You can reach Lorvan at 415- 385-4076; her website is under re-construction.

Coastside Fields
by Yvonne Lorvan
Tiny mint green x’s dot the damp, dark chocolate fields
where last week there were earth-brown rows of harrowed soil.
Fountains of fine water spray over the growing plants.
Some days there are rainbows in them, often not.
These are the seedling brussel sprouts, which will                                                                                             become miniature towers of emerald green,                                                                                                         tiny sproutlets clinging to each stalk, which,                                                                                                      like kindly snails covered the Buddha’s head                                                                                                       to shield him from a scorching sun.
Workers come, a dozen at a time, to cut the leaves
they gently pull the sprouts from their vertical
homes and place them in the hopper, which
follows them row by row. They fall into green boxes
with clear plastic blankets, on their way to market.
Remaining are the stalks, naked and alone, awaiting
the shredder which grinds them into juicy mulch.
They are returned to the soil to nourish the field.
There is a cycle to these rituals of fallow and tilling,
growing and gathering. It is all green and brown,
green and brown, green and brown.