‘BOUNCE BACK NATALIE’ TO TURN 106
Former teacher, poet who has beaten back adversity known for positive attitude, sharp memory, good health
“Enjoy the good life. You deserve it. This world was meant to be enjoyed.” Natalie Berndes • Clairemont woman soon to be 106
In her nearly 106 years, Natalie Berndes has survived two global pandemics, a coup in Venezuela, a hurricane in Barbados, a tornado in Oklahoma, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in Long Beach, a heart attack and a bout with breast cancer.
Her good fortune at surviving against the odds, perpetual good health and can-do attitude earned the retired schoolteacher a nickname among her four children: “Bounce Back Natalie.” Although the Clairemont resident lost her husband and her vision about 15 years ago, Berndes still made the best of it by finding a new hobby in her 90s: poetry.
Unable to write things down, she started composing and memorizing poems in her head. She can still recite many of these multi-stanza poems from memory, including “Adios,” the eulogy she’d like read at her funeral. It begins: “It’s time for me to go away / But I love this world / I’d rather stay / But in this matter I have no say.”
“My mom always said that everything will turn out well in the end, so I followed that,” Berndes said in an interview Thursday afternoon. “But I have such a supportive family. I have to thank them for how lucky I am.”
By virtue of her great age, Berndes has experienced more than most San Diegans. She may be the oldest surviving San Diego State University graduate (Class of 1937) and the newly vaccinated greatgrandmother has also survived two global pandemics. She was 3 years old during the 1918 flu pandemic.
“I remember it was a very sad time. Everybody was afraid,” Berndes recalled. “But my grandmother was a Christian Scientist and she said everybody in the family was going to be fine, and we were.”
Berndes was born March 27, 1915, in the L.A. County community of Alhambra. Her mother, Virginia Stivers Bartlett, was a novelist who wrote books about early California history, a few of which were turned into Hollywood screenplays. Berndes remembers money was so tight in her youth that she would put fresh cardboard liners in the soles of her worn-out shoes each morning before she walked to school. She found her calling in grade school, when she would play schoolteacher
and hold day classes for all of the neighborhood kids during summer breaks.
“I just loved the children and watching them bloom,” said Berndes, who later taught children for 14 years at Warren-Walker School in Sunset Cliffs in the 1960s and ’70s.
In 1934, her grandparents in Ocean Beach invited her to come live with them so she could attend San Diego State University. She would ride the bus for hours each day to get to and from campus, where she joined a sorority and earned a degree in education. The year before she graduated she would meet her future husband, a star basketball player and engineering major at the University of Southern California. His name was Axel E. Berndes, but his nickname was “Red.”
“He was this strapping 6foot-3 handsome redhead,” she said. “He just swept me off my feet.”
After college, Red worked as a wildcatter for an oil company. From 1939 to 1951, the couple and their growing family traveled around the U.S. and to war-torn Venezuela, moving constantly as he scouted potential drilling sites. By the time they finally settled in the Loma Portal area of Point Loma in 1951, the Berndeses had four children: Peggy, now 82, of Oceanside; Barry, 79, of Clairemont; Jon, 73, of El Cajon; and Scott, 69, also of Clairemont.
Scott Berndes, who moved his widowed mom into his home several years ago, said his family life growing up was idyllic. “My mom was wonderful. I was never disciplined, never spanked. She never raised her voice at us . ... My parents were wonderful.”
Peggy Berndes, who cooks gourmet meals and brings them down to her mom twice a week, said her mom’s positivity and energy has always been an inspiration: “Mom wakes up each day with an agenda of things she wants to get done. She’s always certain that things will turn out for the best.”
Her children say that although their mom can’t see and her hearing is poor, her mind and memory remain razor-sharp. Berndes said her secrets to longevity are a healthy, fruit- and vegetable-rich diet and daily stretching exercises. Before she lost her sight, she also swam regularly. She also never drank alcohol or smoked and she rarely got sick. The first time she ever took an aspirin, she said, was when she gave birth to her first child.
Berndes said she finds happiness in the small pleasures, like going outside on a sunny day, sitting in her 70year-old rocking chair, cuddling her cat Kitty and sharing meals with her children, who visit regularly and spoil her with surprise treats.
For her birthday on Saturday, the family is planning a feast of her favorite foods, including barbecued pork ribs and a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cake. Her guilty pleasure is chocolates from See’s Candies, so she’s looking forward to getting a few boxes as gifts. As for advice to others on living a long and happy life?
“Just live every day,” she said. “Enjoy the good life. You deserve it. This world was meant to be enjoyed, and that’s the way I feel about it.”