PRPC Connections - Getting to know...

Dodie L.

By Osteo Dave

I had not met Dodie L. (pronounced Dough’-dee) until I interviewed him for this profile, even though we both regularly play pickleball at Centennial Park. He and his wife, Chris, play at the crack of dawn and leave before I arrive – well after dawn has fully cracked and the early birds have gone home to breakfast on worms. Chris introduced him to pickleball over a year ago and Dodie immediately found it as fun and addictive as the rest of us.

Dodie and Chris married during college and moved to Paso Robles after graduating from USC in 1975, when there were only about 7,500 people here. For years, he had a thriving practice as a family dentist with an office on Vine near 12^th Street, until he retired early to manage and maintain their rental properties. His maintenance skills were in evidence when I met him at their beautiful, well cared-for long-time home overlooking Paso Robles, where he and Chris live with their dog, Nika, who eagerly tried to lick the smile off my face. They have a daughter and son and four grandchildren living in the Bay Area and Seattle.

Waiting for a game on the courts, I like to ask people about their careers as well as what they do when they’re not dinking pickleballs into the net. Even though Dodie retired from dentistry, he never slowed down. He was a trustee for the California Dental Association for years, and despite his second career as a self-employed maintenance man, he found time to volunteer with the Pioneer Day Parade in Paso Robles, helping coordinate entrants to prevent the tractors from running over the horses and marching bands. His record was unblemished.

He believes his family and friends would say he’s “industrious”, and after hearing about what he does and has done, I’d agree. But Dodie isn’t just busy, he’s passionate about some things. When his daughter was young, she cajoled him into filling in for a play she was in, which led Chris and Dodie to work with the Pioneer Players community theater group for many years, until the 2003 earthquake destroyed the Flamson Theater. He acted in supporting roles, made sets, was stage crew, and even did some singing and dancing – ask him to do a number from ‘Annie’. As with many things that Dodie does, he did “a little of everything”.

He, Chris, and their family enjoyed backpacking in the High Sierras over the years. To celebrate their 65^th birthdays, they planned to hike the entire 222 miles of the John Muir Trail in just over three weeks … until Chris broke her arm. Dodie decided to do it anyway, alone, but that required some more efficient packing. To ensure that he got enough calories on the strenuous trip, he took Wessen Vegetable Oil and 150-proof Everclear, which is practically pure alcohol. He admitted that he was pretty “well lubricated” throughout the trip. He started in Yosemite Valley and finished after a final side jaunt to the top of 14,505’ Mt. Whitney on the last day. Not bad for 65, or any age.

These days, perhaps Dodie’s biggest passion is the rural property they have on the road to Lake Nacimiento that they call “The Bluff”. It has lots of natural oaks, sycamores, and manzanitas, a tall white cliff (i.e., the ‘bluff’, try to keep up) on one side of a little canyon with a creek at the bottom, a meadow that’s perfect for parties, and two natural springs. He’s cut several hiking trails and the springs feed a pond that he dug plus a small man-made geyser that he formed, ala Yellowstone. In a huge tree, he built a stupendous treehouse, that as a boy I would have loved to live in, and he added a long zip line that runs from the treehouse across the creek to the meadow – oh man. He built a big pigeon cote on stilts to accommodate up to 60 homing pigeons, and he keeps a small herd of ‘mowing equipment’ that includes goats, sheep, and a horse. In other words, it has “a little of everything”. This is a paradise that the ‘Tom Sawyer’ in anyone could love, and clearly, Dodie does too.

Pictured is Dodie at The Bluff with the treehouse in the background, and Dodie with Nika on the dock at the pond with the geyser, at rest, right behind them.