‘Swashbuckling Old Fuds’ : Adventurers’ Club Celebrates Lifetime on the Edge of the Extraordinary

At a glance, it could be a weekly meeting of Elks, Rotarians or Kiwanians, but take another look. They aren’t trying to sell each other cars or life insurance. There are a few beer bellies but no slouchers. Several are elderly, except in the eyes, which are focused on far horizons.

Think you’ve been there? Done everything?

Have you flown with Jim Wilson and the Flying Tigers, or on the Berlin airlift when the Cold War was hot?

Have you driven a Russian jeep through Mongolia with Pierre Odier?

Held your ground with John Davidson and kept your camera turning as a crazed bull elephant charged?

Greeted Pancho Villa with John Williams Roulac on a train the legendary bandit had just held up?

Meet the Adventurers’ Club of Los Angeles. Its 200 members may not be extraordinary men, but they have done extraordinary things, many in unpronounceable places where you can’t mail post cards.

Club president Bob Silver says, “It isn’t just guys that get in a barrel and go over Niagara Falls.”

It isn’t only for rich guys, either. There are doctors, lawyers and judges but also people who get their hands dirty. Dues are $150 per year; members pay for their own weekly meals.

“We don’t want an environment where we would exclude people for reason of finances,” said Keith Chase, a member from San Clemente.

But if you’re female, forget it.

Roulac organized the club in 1921 for “gentlemen adventurers.” It was officially founded in 1922. Until recent years the weekly meetings were held in the basement of a building on Pico Boulevard in downtown L.A., amid the club’s artifacts from around the world. Then the building was razed for construction of the expanded Convention Center.

The artifacts--here a set of mastoden tusks, there a shrunken head--are now stored in South Gate, awaiting a permanent home. Oddly, the club has never had one, shifting from one rented space to another over the years--not so odd, maybe, considering the restless nature of the members and their ability to be at ease anywhere on earth. Meanwhile, they meet each Thursday night at the Elks Club in Long Beach.

Their purpose is to celebrate, sustain and foster the spirit of adventure, which may be at odds with modern comforts. Whether TV is to blame, Silver said, “The club is suffering from old age.”

Indeed, a magazine article once said the club could be mistaken for a bunch of “swashbuckling old fuds.” Roald Amundsen, who discovered the South Pole, and Cecil B. De Mille, producer of historical Hollywood spectaculars, were members. But while many may be over the hill or, alas, gone on to “The Great Adventure,” as they call it, some young blood still runs hot enough to qualify.

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The club’s annual Night of High Adventure is a dress-up banquet. Silver, who spent 3 1/2 years traveling and sailing the world after taking an engineering degree from USC in the 50s, wears his spiffy Marine Corps Mess Dress. L.C. (Smokey)Storms, whose Navy scout plan was forced down in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, wears a full Scottish kilt outfit. Seumas Coyne plays the bagpipes.

But a single guest table is more current. Frank Guernsey sailed 87 days alone from King Harbor to Japan in a 24-foot boat he built and plans to sail around Cape Horn next year. Manuel Olivera, a USC graduate student from Spain, recently spent nearly three years traveling 8,000 miles from Greenland to Alaska by foot, dogsled and kayak. Marine Lt. Col. Jay Pellicone commanded KC-130 air tanker missions in the Persian Gulf and Somalia.

None of the three are yet members, but their exploits give Silver confidence that the spirit of adventure survives beyond young people who are famous for 15 minutes. Odier plans to return to Mongolia next year and trek across the land, not drive.

Also, Silver said, “I’ve reduced the median age for the board of directors to the early 50s. I feel good about that.”

But without its heritage the club might be merely a bunch of bungee jumpers. Will Rogers visited the club with pilot Wiley Post the night before they left on the first leg of their planned round-the-world polar flight in 1935. Post discussed their plans but Rogers declined requests to speak.

Finally, the chairman said he regretted that Rogers had nothing to say. Challenged, Rogers stood up, smiled and drawled, “Is that so?” and proceeded to talk for two hours until 1 a.m. Two weeks later he and Post crashed and died in Alaska.

No Adventurers’ meeting goes without a gong and a silent, somber toast “to all absent and departed adventurers, wherever they may be.”

Gen. Jimmy Doolittle died in September, joining, among others, Fred Demara, the real-life “Great Impostor.” Gerhard Bakker and Bill Buchanan died when a whale capsized their boat in Baja California’s Scammons Lagoon in 1983. Philip Roulac, son of the founder, died Nov. 11 at Borrego Springs. He went out riding; his horse came back without him.

Members are listed by number in the order they joined the club. The oldest survivor is Louis Loober, No. 213. Now 92, he fled Russia with his wife and sister as a teenager during the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution to escape the slaughter of the privileged bourgeoisie. Jewels were sewn into the lining of Loober’s fur coat to finance their harrowing trip to America. He still wears the crimson beret he received in Israel. It is adorned with commemorative medals of his adventures, including service in the Israeli army in the late 40s before Israel became a state.

Later, Loober became a furrier and made frequent trips back to Russia on business. When another club member, Bob Feldman, gave his eyewitness account of the latest Russian upheaval, Loober noted, “I saw (the Bolsheviks) come in and I saw ‘em go out.”

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The Adventurers have a different speaker each week. Some topics this past year:

--”WW II B-17 Bomber Pilot”;

--”Salvaging the 40 Cannon Wreck”;

--”Ballooning With Malcolm Forbes”;

--”Stalking Venomous Snakes”;

--”Hunting for Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat.”

All are first-hand accounts. Few are dull. But woe be the speaker who tries to embellish his facts. Some member has probably been there already.

Chase is a pioneer underwater photographer. He skindived in the ‘40s, before scuba gear was developed in the ‘50s. He doesn’t intend to climb Everest. There is no points system for achievement.

“I don’t think we try to rank or categorize one member against another,” Chase said. “There’s not a person in this club that hasn’t been on a credit-card trip. But somewhere along the way everyone has done something that was a little different. It wasn’t always a planned event.

“I think there’s some degree of armchair adventure in everyone. You can vicariously enjoy someone else’s experience. But most of this gang, if health, permits, will try to get out and do their things.”

Membership for women has long been a touchy subject. Adventure can be shared by men and women. The Voyager’s non-stop flight around the world in 1986 was extraordinary enough to qualify the participants for membership, but while Dick Rutan was one pilot, Jeane Yeager was the other. The issue never came up.

“Obviously, she was qualified,” Silver said, “but she failed the test on gender.”

Loober, the eldest member, said, “A lot of women would like to join. A lot of them have had more adventures than some of the men (members).”

The problem is the club’s charter: no women.

“Seventy-five years ago that’s the kind of clubs there were,” Silver said, “social clubs for men.”

Early this year Silver received a petition signed by 25 members calling for a vote to admit women. The measure lost, 95-5. Apparently, some changed their minds.

Silver said when it comes right down to it, “Older members don’t want to change, and there aren’t enough younger members to carry weight. I’m sorry to say we’re human.”

But the motivation should be adventure for adventure’s sake, not a conscious effort to qualify.

“I don’t seek adventure,” Odier said. “Adventure presents itself. Adventure is just getting up in the morning. Life is an adventure.”

But one must be willing to accept the opportunities.

Chase said, “There’s an element of risk in most of the things we do.”

Often the only risk is to change one’s lifestyle. Success or failure has little to do with it. The experience is what counts.

Past club president Al A. Adams wrote, “The adventurer, perhaps consciously, perhaps not, seeks noteworthy events or experiences for his life. These men draw about and unto themselves treasures and trophies--reminders of the great forces and of the victories and defeats of adventure.”

The treasures and trophies are mostly in the spirit. A traditional toast by Dr. Bob Seaman summed it up: “To every lost trail, lost cause and lost comrade.”

“Hear, hear,” the members murmured.

“To the game,” said Loober.