Hawkins, Bessie Mae

Santa Barbara has lost an icon in the local restaurant business. To her family she was Mom, Grandma, Aunt, and GG. We were all very aware of her celebrity and fame but she never made us feel less important to her.
Bessie was born in a small house on lower Garden Street which still exists today amongst small businesses and heavy traffic. The family soon moved to the home she grew up in on Blanchard St., which also still exists. She attended Franklin Elementary School, S.B. Jr. High School and S.B. High School graduating in 1940. She was a married woman when she graduated because of the looming wars all over the world. She and her new husband, Avery Nirenberg, moved into their home on Montecito St. and were blessed with a son, Bryan “Skip,” one year later. Fifteen months later they had a second son, Kenneth.
Bessie started her long career at The Blue Onion Restaurant in Montecito. She then moved up to the main Blue Onion restaurant on State St. under the big fig tree catering to the local clientele during the day and the cruisers and teenagers at night. Along the way she was blessed with her beautiful daughter, Carol Ryder. After the Blue Onion, she was hired by the Weniger family to manage their new restaurant, The El Patio, across from West Beach. Her reputation as a skilled chef and restaurant manager was growing and after several years she moved on to Benny Bray’s 101 restaurant on the highway near Castillo St. When the highway was widened in 1961 The 101 was torn down. She moved on to Chris Prip’s restaurant in Radio Square at the corner of carrillo and De La Vina Streets. During her time at Prip’s she and her business partner, Jim Smock, bought the old, Victorian house at the corner of Bradbury and West Cota Street. Both families spent seven years restoring the old place and turned it into one of the most famous restaurants in S.B. at that time, The Redwood Inn. The upstairs was turned into the living quarters for her and her family. The restaurant was so popular that lines of people would stand on the porch and walkways to wait for one of her famous meals. Her son, Ken, the wine steward, would offer free glasses of wine to the eager patrons outside. Eventually she sold her interest in the Redwood Inn to her business partner. When Harry’s Plaza Restaurant opened in 1968, her good friend Harry Davis offered her a deal she couldn’t refuse. He wanted her to run the front bar booths which she did with class for seventeen years. She was honored with two oil portraits along with others on the walls. She was so well loved there customers would wait for one of her booths to open up to be with her. Then there were the regulars with their standing reservations to be at one of her booths. Visitors who didn’t know her would leave messages for the manager on the paper place mats giving her every compliment one could think of. She would always chip in where needed to help friends at their restaurants. She spent time at Arnoldi’s with Jim and Helen Romp and was always available to help cook for the Rancheros Visitadores on their famous rides in the S.Y. Valley every year. Bessie was a life long member of the Culinary Alliance and a registered chef and won many food awards from Art Ryan.
Despite all of her hard and dedicated years in the profession, she made plenty of time for her other loves; her family and her friends. Her dinner parties were beyond description. If you were ever lucky enough to get an invitation to her home for dinner, you would not soon forget it. All holidays with her family were spent around her long tables seating 20+ people. “There’s always room for one more” she would say while she hurried in another chair for whoever showed up at the door. Always gracious and with a big, beautiful smile on her face. Her holiday tables were so beautifully decorated nothing could compare. And her cooking. She could do it all with such ease and everything came out to the table with perfection. She could sit down to a huge prime rib dinner, with her friends and family, which included shrimp cocktails for starters, get up and do dishes, serve dessert, usually fresh baked pies and coffee or after dinner drinks and you would never realize she was gone for a minute. She has been called often “A one woman restaurant.” As you left to go home she had all the leftovers packaged up in separate containers for her guests to take home. She wanted her kitchen and refrigerator empty so she could start planning her next meal. At Christmas dinners she would let us know what she had planned for Easter.
She found time somehow to do a lot of traveling with friends and family. Her greatest joy was taking her grandchildren on long road trips. Grandsons one time, granddaughters the next. They saw most of the western U.S. including Yosemite, Oregon, Washington, Yellowstone, Sam Diego, Catalina and everything in between. Even an airplane ride down into the Grand Canyon during a thunder storm and being chased by a buffalo in Yellowstone. She adored getting all “gussied up” and traveling with her friends Gene Register, Dick Hagan, Virginia Davis and Eleanor Winters to San Francisco for drinks at the Top of the Mark and dinner at some of the classiest restaurants there. They all traveled to Maine on the East Coast together to see the fall colors and stayed at Dick and Gene’s home. One of her most memorable adventures was with her brother, John and his wife Ruth, to the island of Tahiti. She also hiked the Muir Trail out of Yosemite with her son Skip and Grandson Brin in 1981 at age 59. In her later years she spent many happy Christmas Eves with Skip and his family in Thousand Oaks, Cal. She would never give up time with her family and friends and she was never in her life late for any date or appointment. If you went half an hour early to pick her up to surprise her she would be waiting, dressed “to the nines”, at the bottom of her driveway. All of her grandchildren were taught cribbage and there was always a board within reach whether at home or on the road. In her retirement, she spent a lot of time at her “little cottage” in Mission Canyon tending to her fruit trees and keeping the whole place spotless and well tended. At 80 years of age, she carved a ten foot totem pole in her car port with a chain saw and carving tools. It made two pages in the S.B. News-Press in May of 2002. She always felt a connection to the Native Indians of this country. After finishing that totem pole, she drove clear to Oregon, all alone, with her chain saw and tools in her trunk to build another totem pole for her son, Ken, while he was living there. She was able to pick her own Douglas Fir, for her use, which was cut down by Ken. She had a bar room on the back of her cottage filled on one wall with an arrowhead collection. Another wall had shelves full of handmade tribal dolls. There were also pictures of all the famous chiefs hung like family photos along with several Navajo rugs. The back wall of the bar room was built by her and her husband, Leo, with discarded wine bottles which all her friends saved for her. They were embedded in concrete with just the ends showing through. It was a beautiful sight when the sun shone through them and at night there were spot lights out doors to light them up.
Her home in Mission Canyon was the only home that her grandchildren remember her living in. She moved there around 1968 and spent all her days there till she was too old to handle the constant upkeep. She sold her “cottage” and moved in with her daughter, Carol, in Pilot Hill, Calif. She had her own quarters in a beautiful big home that her son-in-law, Leonard Paquette, designed and built overlooking the whole valley in the Gold Country of the Sierra foothills. She spent many happy years there with Carol and Leonard. Their son, Sean and his family, live on the same large piece of property. She eventually moved back to her beloved Santa Barbara to spend her final years.
She made many close and dear friends over the years, some of whom she outlived. Mindy Dufek, her favorite hairdresser and good friend. Eleanor Winters and her Dalmatians. Mary Popp and Carol Rue, her “adopted daughters,” Bill Persulakes, Frankie Rivas, Jim and Helen Romp, Jody Rohde, Dave Weniger, Stan and Sharon Woo, Harry and Virginia Davis, Dick Hagan and Gene Register, Bud Bledsoe, Sam Battistone and her beloved “rotten dog” Roscoe. And so many, many more. Too many to mention.
Bessie leaves behind her sons Bryan “Skip” Nirenberg (Patsy Fitch) of Thousand Oaks, Ken Nirenberg (Lynette Severson Nirenberg) of Santa Barbara, daughter Carol Ryder Paquette of Pilot Hill, Ca., and her stepson Robert Hawkins (Linda Guidotti) of Santa Barbara. In addition she leaves behind her grandchildren Brin Nirenberg (Sherry) of Arkansas, Bonnie Nirenberg Abbott (Scott Jacobson) of Thousand Oaks, Barri Nirenberg Jones (Thomas) of Santa Barbara, Matthew Nirenberg (Diana) of Santa Barbara, John Paquette (Veronique) of Wenatchee, Wa., Sean Paquette (Tina) of Pilot Hill, Ca., Bonnie Evans of Grover Beach, Brian Hawkins of Santa Barbara and Thomas Hawkins of Buellton, Ca., and many nieces and nephews and close friends. She also leaves behind seventeen great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her parents Thomas and Oresia Tenbroeck Hollensteiner, her brothers John and Fred Hollensteiner, her sister Dorothy Hollensteiner Hazard, her great grandson Brin Nirenberg Jr., her daughter-in-law Beverly Nirenberg, her son-in-law Leonard Paquette, stepson Greg Hawkins, and her three husbands Avery Nirenberg, Daniel Ryder, and Leo Hawkins. She will be dearly missed by all of her large family and her hundreds of “best friends”.
I’m building my own little library,
embedded in my heart,
for all the moments spent with you
before you had to part.
I can open it up whenever I like,
pick a moment and watch it through,
My little library acts as a promise
we’11 never ever forget you.
Condolences, pictures and your own stories can be left at mcdermottcrockett.com at their obituaries and sharing and tribute wall. A celebration of Bessie’s life will be held at a later date.