Enid Patricia Greaves, 91, a 49-year resident of Laguna Beach’s Top of the World neighborhood passed away Jan. 16, 2014 due to a sudden bout with pneumonia.
Born on the Mediterranean island of Malta in 1922, she was known as “Paddy” to all her close friends.
As a young woman, Enid worked in the British war office in downtown London during the day and as a spotter on the rooftop of the family home at night. She and her sister Joan were tasked as junior fire-fighters putting-out incendiary fires during the London blitz of World War II. She occasionally saw Winston Churchill emerging from 10 Downing Street while traveling from the war office in 1944.
Educated at the Green School for Girls, west London’s Isleworth, Enid studied English and fine arts at college which she later refined into an artistic hobby painting Laguna seascapes in watercolors.
She married Donald Greaves of Alberta, Canada, in 1942, a flight mechanic in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and soon moved to Canada from England in 1945. They learned about the warmer Pacific climate in Orange County and moved to Garden Grove in 1948 and to Laguna Beach in 1965.
In the ‘60s, Greaves worked at Disneyland as a gate cashier and soon learned the contradiction of amusement park work. She borrowed a phrase from the Magic Kingdom and coined her own, “Disneyland is the happiest place on earth – unless you work there!”
Greaves was an avid reader of newspaper commentary and viewer of public television’s “Downton Abbey” and “Foyle’s War.”
She was generous with her time and celebrated life sharing traditional English tea and scones with all passers-by. She lived by the Golden Rule and never uttered a discouraging word. She was truly an English lady.
Greaves is survived by her sister Jo of Rainham, Kent, England.
She is greatly missed by those she touched by her grace, charm and joyful personality.
