Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. – Mrs. Nellie Coffman’s success in life – as the woman who started the era of desert resorts and has kept on top of the heap – is a marvelous example of two things:
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That you don’t have to follow your original ambition to be successful; that you can fit yourself to circumstances and still lead a wonderful life.
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That it’s never too late to start. For, as I’ve said, Mrs. Coffman was 42 when she began her second life (and on “half a shoe string,” as she says), and she was past 50 before any real accomplishment came to her.
When she was young Nellie Coffman’s one goal was music. She thought she had a fine voice, and maybe she did. Even during her first marriage she taught music. But finally she had to give her music up, and it didn’t kill her.
In those “music” days, she often said to herself that, if she were ever thrown out on her own and had to make her own living, she was positive of one thing – she’d never do it by running a boarding-house.
“How the Lord must have sat back and laughed when He heard that remark,” she says. For that’s just what she’s been doing for 33 years. But now, if she had her entire life to live over, she’d have it exactly as it was.
Once into it, Mrs. Coffman found “running a boarding-house” a very engaging way to make a living. For she loves people and she always liked to keep house. “I love to scrub a floor,” she says. Although she has 200 employees, she still does most of the work in her own cottage on the grounds of the Desert Inn.
She is deeply interested in her employes; in fact, sort of mothers them. It is illustrated in the stories of her Filipino boys who have gone to war. Already 11 have enlisted, and when the inn closes in May for the summer there will be around 30.
Proud of her ‘boys’
Mrs. Coffman is so proud of her boy Segundo Rigonan she could bust. He worked at the inn for 12 years, and for the last three years had no special duties at all. He drove Mrs. Coffman’s car and spent the rest of the time as a “free agent,” keeping an eye on things.
Segundo was the first to enlist. He was all hot for getting at the Japs. He wanted to kill a few personally. Several of the other boys followed him. Mrs. Coffman didn’t try to dissuade them. In fact, it made her prouder of them.
Segundo is already a sergeant, and when he gets leave he comes “home” to the Inn. One of the other boys was “home” during my visit. They go right to Mrs. Coffman’s door the first thing.
Each week Mrs. Coffman sends them a box of stuff. Once she sent Segundo a box of dates. He wrote back that he was quartered with a bunch of Texans, and that they sure did like those dates.
So Mrs. Coffman, who is still fond of Texas, sent another box of 15 pounds, with a note to Segundo saying, “Get those longhorns’ stomachs filled up.”
Another of her Filipino boys is at Fort Sill, Okla. The other day he wrote and said he’d sure like some of those cookies they used to serve at the Inn called “macaroons.” So Mrs. Coffman had 600 macaroons baked and shipped them off to Fort Sill.
Not a pessimist
Unlike most people, Mrs. Coffman doesn’t think the war is going to bring the world to an end, although she does think we’d better start changing our way of life pretty fast if we’re going to win. She believes the hardships will strengthen our fiber, harden us up, force us to have more initiative. She, herself, wouldn’t be afraid to start from scratch again at 75.
And war restrictions aren’t bothering her, either. Like me, she believes in a philosophy of not laying away a lot of stuff (although she did confess to buying a dollar’s worth of hairpins). But when everybody else was buying silk stockings, she didn’t.
“I’ll wear cotton stockings or go bare-legged,” she says. “You know, the college girls think they started the fad of going bare-legged, but they didn’t. I started it myself, 30 years ago, because I couldn’t afford stockings at all, and because it was too hot out here in the summer to wear them anyhow.”
The other day Mrs. Coffman was walking through the grounds, and one of her workmen stopped her. He was a carpenter who has been here many years. He was gravely worried about what would happen to the resort business next year, and of course about his own job.
“Mrs. Coffman,” he said, “you can see ahead about these things. What do you think we’ll be doing this time next year?”
Mrs. Coffman pretends to be no seer. But she doesn’t worry too much, either. She figures that if everything comes to the worst she’ll have a hell of a lot of company. So she said:
“John, I have no idea what we’ll be doing. Maybe I’ll be running a hash-house, for all I know. But, if I am, I bet I’ll be cooking the best hash in town.”
And she wasn’t just talking through her hat, either.
62 seized in German home
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