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DR. AMORITA AUDREE TREGANZA, 1912 - 2002

Dr. Amorita Audree Treganza was the first Miss Lemon Grove in 1928, an actress at the Old Globe in the 1930s and 1940s, San Diego Woman of the Year in 1964, and a pioneer in pediatric optometrics. She died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at 6:45 p.m. on Sunday, May 5 in her Lemon Grove home.

Her beloved homestead was purchased for $5 in 1906 by her grandparents, Eduardo and Josephine Treganza, who arrived in San Diego County in 1890 by wagon from Salt Lake City, Utah. Flanking the home Eduardo built, is the famous, fabulously-gnarled Brazilian pepper tree that he planted during the same period. Eduardo was an orchardist whose expertise in budding and grafting brought him clients throughout California and the Western states.

Amorita was born on June 6, 1912, in Salt Lake City, where her father, Alberto Treganza, was an A.I.A architect credited with bringing the Arts and Crafts style to the city. (He also designed many homes in Rancho Santa Fe, the Bonita home of noted architect William Wheeler, and the original police station in San Diego, now threatened with demolition by the Port Commission.)  Her mother, Antwonet Kaufman Treganza, was a writer and ornithologist.

 Alberto resigned his architectural practice in the 1920s and took the family to Tampa, Florida, to invest in the building boom. When the boom failed — and with it the family nest egg — the Treganzas were literally homeless. Alberto and Antwonet were also ill with influenza. Desperate to rejoin the senior Treganzas in California, the family (parents, Amorita, and her younger brother and sister) embarked on a harrowing cross-country car trip. With her parents too ill to drive, the resourceful, 14-year-old Amorita figured out the pedals on the family Ford and drove the group across the southern states, over the old plank road from Yuma, arriving in Lemon Grove on Christmas Day, 1926.

(As a side note, Amorita had trained as a ballet and Spanish dancer and won a position with the Inez Armour Spanish Dance Company in Tampa which was starting a world tour. Her parents’ concerns about sending their young daughter off into an uncertain world, coupled with financial worries and illness, squelched what Amorita later termed, “my almost spectacular career.”)

In 1928, the Lemon Grove Chamber of Commerce and the VFW Post 2082 commissioned Alberto Treganza to design a float for the Fourth of July parade in San Diego. Alberto designed a  seven-by-twelve-foot plaster lemon mounted on a wooden platform adorned with lemons, oranges, and grapefruit from local orchards, and borne on a truck from the Lemon Grove Fruit Packing House. Amorita rode on the float as “Miss Lemon Grove” attended by five fetching handmaidens, one of whom, Arleen Moore Dodson, still lives in Lemon Grove on her family’s homestead. “The Big Lemon” also lives on, an exuberant behemoth at Broadway and Lemon Grove Avenue, reminding all of the city’s agricultural origins and its “Best Climate on Earth.”

Amorita graduated from Grossmont High School in 1929, the year her mother began writing a weekly column, “Walks and Talks with Mother Nature,” for the Sunday issue of the former San Diego Union. In 1932, while earning her degrees in Education and Speech Arts at the new San Diego State College on Montezuma Mesa, Amorita married Robert Turnbull III. A descendant of Jessie Burnett, a silent film actress, and Mexican-Anglo parents (his father, Robert Turnbull II, was the first cameraman hired by Warner Brothers during the silent film era). Robert would later become a noted Foley artist for Warner Brothers and authored a textbook about sound effects. During this period through the 1940s, Amorita performed with the Community Players under the direction of Craig Noel at the Old Globe Theatre.

Amorita developed a fascination with children’s eyesight and its care while working as an assistant to Dr. Ben Sherman in San Diego. She later passed her State Board exams in the College of Optometry and Ophthalmology at USC and married ophthalmologist, Dr. Lloyd Adams. Amorita specialized in pediatric optometrics and devised exercises, special lenses, and testing techniques for children’s growing eyes. Their joint practice in San Diego and Lemon Grove included substantial charitable work. They joined the Flying Samaritans and flew countless missions into impoverished Mexican villages to provide free eye checkups, eyeglasses and surgery.  After Dr. Adams’ death, Amorita continued to travel by truck up and down Baja California to provide clothing, food, and other necessities to poor families.

In 1971, Amorita became the first woman to serve as president of a national medical association—the newly-founded College of Optometrists and Vision Development. She was also the first woman to serve as president of the Girls Club of San Diego. She chaired the March of Dimes and provided optometric services to orphanages, the Girls and Boys Clubs, the Crossroads Foundation for the Rehabilitation of Alcoholic Women, and many other charities. She was a life member and past president of Soroptimist International of Lemon Grove. In 1961, Mayor Charles Dail appointed her San Diego’s goodwill ambassador to seven communities in Baja California. She was chosen San Diego Woman of the Year in 1964. She is an “Honor Grad” in the Grossmont High School Hall of Fame and a founding member of the Lemon Grove Historical Society.

From 1945 to the end of her life, she maintained a second home at Bahia de Los Angeles on the Sea of Cortez, the place she called, “where my soul is”. Her ashes will be scattered there this fall.

Dr. Treganza is survived by her son, Dr. Bob Turnbull IV, a grandson Robert Turnbull V, great grandchildren Jackson and Hannah Turnbull, as well as nieces and nephews and grand nieces and nephews, and her long-time caregiver, Gary Elbert.

In lieu of flowers, contributions are suggested to the Lemon Grove Historical Society, Box 624, Lemon Grove 91946. The Lemon Grove Historical Society will host "A Celebration of the Life of Amorita Treganza" at 1:30 p.m. on June 6 in The Parsonage Museum of Lemon Grove, 7715 Church Street. For information about the celebration, call 619-460-4353 or 619-462-6494.

(contributed by Helen Ofield)
 
 

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