Ted Leventini, 90 years young, is a fixture in Acampo

Ted Leventini, 90, has been a fixture with the Liberty Rural Fire District. He has been a volunteer firefighter since 1947 and has served on the board of directors for the past 32 years. (Ross Farrow/News-Sentinel)

Ted Leventini, 90 years young, is a fixture in Acampo

By Ross Farrow
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Saturday, December 18, 2004 7:59 AM PST

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You might say Ted Leventini Sr. is a man of stability. Moving once in his 90 years is quite enough for him, thank you. And that was at the age of 3, when his family moved from Newman to a 50-acre ranch on Peltier Road, less than a mile east of Highway 99.

The family ranch didn't have electricity. Peltier and other nearby roads were made of dirt and had big chuck holes in the winter. As a child, Leventini milked cows by hand while holding a lantern.

"The only thing bad thing about dairy cows is you had to milk them twice a day, seven days a week," said Stan Seifert, 63, chief of the Liberty Rural Fire District and an Acampo resident himself since 1935.

Milking aside, Leventini has spent a lifetime farming grapes, alfalfa and other crops on his ranch, and he's spent more than a half-century with the Liberty Rural Fire District.

A Peltier Road resident since 1917, Leventini may be the oldest elected official in California. He has served on Liberty Fire's board of directors since 1972 and been a volunteer firefighter since 1947, a year after the district's inception.

"He can still out-work me, out-eat me and out-drink me," said his son, Ted Leventini Jr., 57.

The elder Leventini still gets on ladders and picks oranges.

"I still drive a tractor," he said with pride.

"He always putters in the garden, picks the oranges and persimmons -- everything he shouldn't be doing," his son added.

Still serving at the station

Leventini doesn't respond anymore to fires or emergency medical calls, but he still mans the fire station on Bruella Road whenever firefighters are out on a call -- even if it's at 1 a.m., Seifert said.

Ted Leventini

Leventini has also served on the fire district's board of directors since 1972. He was most recently elected to a four-year term at the age of 88 in 2002, defeating Julie Ballard, who filed for Leventini's seat, not knowing he was so firmly entrenched in the community.

Ballard, 35 at the time, appeared to have solid credentials to serve on the fire board as a paramedic for American Medical Response ambulance company. But she had a major handicap -- she had lived in Acampo only 31/2 years.

"My intentions were perfectly noble, but I think I stirred (the election) up," Ballard told the News-Sentinel in 2002. "His name is huge in this district."

Apparently.

Despite being 88 years old at the time, Leventini garnered two-thirds of the vote, winning 575 to 272.

Today, at 90, Leventini may be the elder elected statesman in California. Brenda Ross, a City Councilwoman in the Orange County community of Laguna Woods, is 88 years old, and Henry Harkema left the Paramount City Council in 2003 at age 91, according to the League of California Cities.

Geoffrey Neill, a spokesman for the California Association of Special Districts, said that although records are not available, he is not aware of anyone in the myriad of California's small fire, water and other small districts approaching 90.

Yet another distinction for Leventini -- he is one of only nine people to serve on Liberty's fire board in the district's 58 years.

"He does a lot of stuff, but he doesn't want the recognition," his son said.

A gourmet cook

Leventini is also known throughout the Lodi area for his cooking at club events, wedding receptions and other affairs -- including chicken cacciatore, polenta, prime rib, steaks, spaghetti and his prize venison, which he hunted down with his own gun in his younger days.

In fact, crowds for service club dinners were especially large when it became known that Leventini was the cook, said Seifert, the Liberty fire chief.

Although he didn't shoot the deer himself, Leventini cooked venison as recently as last week to prepare for a big dinner held by the Lodi Eagles.

"He got me to start cooking for large quantities," said Tony Fuso, who serves on the Lodi Italian Club board. "They have a (pasta) sauce that is really good, and they make it from scratch."

Leventini owned The Camelot, a restaurant in Lakewood Mall, in the late 1960s and early '70s, plus another Camelot in Stockton. He also owned a drive-in milk stop in Carmichael.

Leventini maintains his membership in several organizations, including the Eagles, Lodi Italian Club, Dakota Club, Native Sons of the Golden West and the Knights of Columbus serving St. Anne's and St. Joachim Catholic churches.

Former Lodi Mayor Bo Katzakian, who has known Leventini for more than 60 years through the Eagles lodge, recalls a 1968 excursion where Leventini and his wife, Violet, joined three other couples on a boat trip from the Terminous area to San Francisco.

Each couple rode separate 19-foot boats through the Delta to San Francisco, walked to Lombard Street, and stayed at a motel. After breakfast at the International House of Pancakes the next morning, they returned home.

Katzakian recalls asking Violet Leventini if she was afraid to ride on the boat. She replied, "No, I was too busy singing, 'Lord I'm coming home.'"

The Leventinis managed to get away from the Lodi area quite a bit, traveling to Switzerland and Italy. They also took a Mediterranean cruise and went to Africa with the Sons in Retirement.

Born May 9, 1914, Leventini said he doesn't know whether he was born on his family's ranch in Newman, in southwestern Stanislaus County, or in a nearby hospital.

"I was too young to remember," he said with the utmost of logic.

His parents, Erminio and Marguerite Leventini, were Swiss immigrants.

Ted Leventini, third from left, in his younger days with the Liberty Rural Fire District. In the 1940s and '50s, the fire station was housed on the Kennefick Road ranch of the fire district's founder, Herb Buck I, fourth from the left. (Courtesy photo)

Leventini attended Lodi High School, where he was on a judging team for dairy cattle for Lodi's Future Farmers of America chapter. He got the hunting bug when he cut school one day in 1931 to hunt with his friends. It's been a hobby of his for many years.

"He's got a lot of horns to show for it out in the shed," Ted Jr., said.

Leventini didn't graduate from Lodi High, feeling the need to stay home from school to work on the family ranch during the depths of the Great Depression.

"The Depression years were hard," Leventini added. "We had to borrow money to pay taxes."

Slowing down but still spry

While he's not as active as he used to be, Leventini works in his shed on the ranch and remains involved with the fire district and his clubs.

"He's just a lot of fun to be around," Fuso said. "He'll dance around all night. He can still polka, and he fox trots.

"Ted and Violet have been family friends for a long time. They are just very, very generous and sincere people."

Ted and Violet Leventini, who once worked on the ranch, have been married 61 years.

"He and his wife come every Sunday. They always sit in the front row," said Father Michael Kelly of St. Joachim Catholic Church in Lockeford. "They're the cutest little couple you can find. They're madly in love with each other."

Asked how he's managed to not only reach 90 years old but remain so healthy, Leventini said, "Just lucky, I guess."

The Leventinis have two children, Ted Jr., who lives on the family ranch, and Linda Alberti, of Lodi; five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Contact reporter Ross Farrow at rossf@lodinews.com.

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