Lorraine Belmont
Lorraine was born in Idaho Falls, Idaho to Gladys (Hendrickson) Burnham and Lyman Burnham, the eldest sister of Lynn and Gail. Her parents named her Ann Lori, and called her Lori as a girl, but for most of her adult life she went by Lorraine. After graduating from Oakland High School at the age of 16 in 1950, she attended Utah State University in Logan Utah, where she edited the yearbook and earned a BA in Political Science in 1955. She received her MBA from The Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration in 1957, because at that time women couldn’t enroll directly in Harvard. Her fiancé, Stanley C. Hatch, graduated from Harvard Law School the same year and they married in Boston that summer. They lived in New York City where Lorraine worked for Time Magazine, moving to Santa Barbara in 1962. She and Stan were associated with the Center for Democratic Institutions under Robert Hutchens and he began practicing law, opening a law office with Gerald Parent. Meanwhile, Lorraine earned an MA in Political Science at UCSB and in 1964 joined the English department of Santa Barbara City College, which inspired her to return to UCSB for an MA in English. During her tenure at city college, she served as department chair for six years, bringing innovations to the department which still remain today.
Lorraine’s business degree aided her in developing new programs for the college such as Shakespeare in Ashland in the summertime and Theater in New York at Christmas Time. For many years she took groups of students of all ages to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in Ashland, OR as part of the SBCC summer school. For one action-pack-filled week, while living in the dorms at Southern Oregon State College, students would attend two plays per day and attend a morning workshop class. The workshops included guests from the Festival such as stage managers, directors, costume designers, lighting and stage designers and backstage tours of the theaters.
During her Theatre in New York winter program, which was modeled on the Ashland program, attendees would go to Broadway shows and morning workshops. There she met the actor Eric Booth, who came to SBCC on several occasions to give lectures and workshops. When Royal Shakespeare Company actors, like Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley, came to UCSB under the auspices of professor Homer Swander, Lorraine made sure they visited SBCC as well. Her goal was to enrich the curriculum and involve students in exciting and varied cultural events. She was committed to SBCC’s mission: give students the skills and confidence needed to move forward in life. A dramatic example was the brilliant SBCC Theatre Arts student Remi Sandri, a student of hers who she introduced to OSF actor and director James “Jim” Edmondson. Remi pursued acting as a career by attending Circle on the Square in New York City and then was hired by OSF where he played lead roles there for years. They remained lifelong friends.
After her divorce, Lorraine bought a small ranch in Santa Ynez, that she named Meadow Farm, to share her love of horses and animals with her children. Her daughter Christine competed in 3-Day Eventing and Dressage for many years, and later, Christine’s son, Lucas, followed in her footsteps. Lorraine not only passed on her love of equestrian sports but also her appreciation of theater arts. Her grandson, Alex, is becoming an actor. Lorraine directed three plays post-retirement in a resuscitated Shakespeare in the Park series: ‘As You Like it’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘The Taming of the Shrew.’ These were performed on the broad lawns of the SBCC, a highlight of those summers.
Lorraine was daring! She mastered a near-professional level of water skiing by taking daily lessons on Lake Tahoe the summer when she was 21, after her shift at Harrods dealing blackjack ended at 6 am. She was a certified scuba diver, engaged in helicopter glacier skiing in Canada before her children came along, and earned a pilot’s license because she and her husband, Stan, owned a Cessna 182 small plane. A very memorable experience to earning that license happened on her first solo flight in 1970. Her flight instructor, something of a male chauvinist, gave her inadequate instruction on landing and she ended up doing a very scary ‘porpoise landing.’ on the belly of the plane. She fired that instructor, purchased the bent propeller and attached it over their garage as a memento and proceeded to land planes better than any of her future instructors. She went on to take aerobatic flying lessons for fun and satisfy her thrill-seeking nature.
In junior high, Lorraine began her love of animals because when she took horseback riding lessons after having polio to strengthen her weakened legs as per her doctor’s advice. Her parents later bought her a horse and she joined the Mills College cavalry-style drill team as a high school student. She enjoyed performing at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and competing in hunter shows on her 17.2 hh, black appendix quarter horse mare named, “Copy Cat.” After college, she stopped riding but picked it up again many years later when her daughter Christine wanted to ride. She became a horse owner again for her daughter to train and show, but she ended up riding with the Santa Ynez Valley Hunt Club in the 1980s continuing to satisfy her adventurous nature. Dogs, too, were always a big part of her life. She showed her Silky Terriers, Bup, Spooky and Susu, in breed and obedience at the big Santa Barbara Dog Show in the 1970s. Additionally, she had a Dalmatian named “Lump”, a German shorthair named “Odie,” and her last two dogs: a miniature Dachshund named, “Angel” and her beloved greyhound, “Braveheart,” that she received as a gift from her sister, Patricia Gail Burnham’s prizewinning greyhound line.
Lorraine was ever open to a new adventure. Post-retirement, she lived on a houseboat in the SB Harbor, traveled to Argentina, China, South Africa, Ireland and the Czech republic. She even drove halfway across the U.S. in with a Scamp trailer and camped along the way to visit relatives in Logan, UT and Idaho Falls, ID. She owned an A-frame house in Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, near her sister Lynn Manchester and then sold that to after Lynn moved to Hawaii to buy a 3-story duplex just below Coit Tower in San Francisco, later a house in Ashland, Oregon. Eventually, she settled back in Santa Barbara to be near her children and grandchildren.
Her family would like to thank Rhoda Demonteverde and all of her caregivers at Casa Rhoda for their kind help with Lorraine in her final years.
Lorraine is survived by two children, two grandchildren and her sister Lynn’s children: Christine Hatch Santi of Santa Ynez, CA, Kenneth M. Hatch of Carpinteria, CA; Christine’s sons, Lucas and Alex Santi; and her nieces Alison Manchester, Mari Manchester and Lisa Manchester-Slocum.
For memorial service information contact her daughter, Christine via email at sqrhalt@gmail.com or visit this website:
https://sites.google.com/view/lorrainebelmont/home. In lieu of flowers, you may donate to her favorite causes listed on the website in the name of Lorraine Belmont.