Arthur Simoneau, 69, who has been hang gliding for 40 years, was a calculated risk-taker. And on Tuesday, as residents evacuated from the Pacific Palisades fire, Mr. Simoneau was brought closer to hell.
Steve Murillo, a longtime friend and fellow hang glider, said he was returning from a ski trip in Mammoth when he learned of the evacuation order for his Topanga home in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Simoneau continued.
“He was heading home to try and save him if he could,” said Murillo, who spoke with Simoneau Tuesday night as a friend drove back to Topanga. “Arthur was the kind of guy who, once he got really passionate about something, you couldn’t stop him from doing it.”
Murillo emailed directions to a friend, telling him which roads were open and which were closed. I never received an email back from him.
Arthur Simoneau on a glider last summer. Friends said he was one of the pioneers of the sport, going hang gliding every weekend.
(Kia Lavanfer)
On Thursday, authorities discovered Simoneau’s body, adding to the growing death toll from one of the deadliest wildfires in state history. As of Saturday night, Los Angeles County had reported 16 deaths.
Murillo said Simoneau was found near the doorway of his home, apparently trying to protect his home.
Friends and neighbors say Simoneau represented the best of Topanga, a close-knit, bohemian mountain community known for welcoming free spirits.
He was soft-spoken and eccentric, with long silver hair tied in a ponytail. There were hang gliding opportunities every weekend. I used to do it barefoot. Then I changed into sandals.
“He was a Topanga resident. He was a perfect fit,” said Marlee Silverman, a friend who met him through the Sylmar Hang Glider Association. “He’s like a grown-up hippie, and he never says a harsh word.”
Neighbor Susan Dumond said everyone in the area knew him as the unofficial caretaker of Swenson Drive, where he lived. He was one of the first to venture onto off-the-beaten-path roads in the early ’90s. For decades afterward, he continued to repair it using his own money. He greeted all his neighbors with a smile and a peace sign, and was known to leave a trail of newly plucked exotics behind him wherever he went.
“I always knew he was on the road because there were weeds all over the road,” said Dumond, who lived a few houses away.
The hillside near the village of Topanga on Topanga Canyon Road is smoldering.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Dumond was evacuated Tuesday night, but the air was thick with smoke and the wind was so strong he could barely open his car door. She returned Thursday to get medical equipment for her husband.
When he left around 4:30 p.m., he saw a sheriff’s deputy outside Simoneau’s home.
“It’s in his nature to protect his community and protect his home. That’s what I imagine he did,” Dumond said. “He really cared about the community and was willing to do anything to help it.”
The community, centered on windy roads in a fire-prone valley, is no stranger to devastating fires. A year after Mr. Simoneau built his home in 1992, wildfires ripped through the town, killing 350 homes and three people.
Jim Wiley, a town plumber who grew up in the area, remembers talking to Simoneau right after the 1993 fire. Like Wiley, Simoneau had decided not to evacuate and told Wiley she was glad she didn’t. After the heat broke a small window in the bathroom, they were able to expel the embers that had begun to drift.
“If that person hadn’t come to put out the fire, it would have been a huge burnout,” Wiley said.
The ruins of Simoneau’s home on Swenson Drive, Topanga, destroyed by fire.
(Rebecca Ellis/Los Angeles Times)
This time, hell turned out to be too intense. On Thursday, the fire was so hot that steel beams collapsed, leaving only the blackened brick exterior of the house. All that could be seen inside were three charred cars and several motorcycles.
Simoneau’s son Andre wrote on a GoFundMe page that his father, who is of Social Security age and was riding a motorcycle wearing a helmet that read “For Novel Purposes Only”, was “dead of old age or disease”. “I always knew there wouldn’t be any,” he wrote.
“It was always in the back of our minds that he would die a spectacular Arthurian death,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, he died in the Palisades fire that was protecting his home. [and] He did what he did best. Despite being a bad guy, he did something brave (or crazy enough) that only he could do. ”
The son did not respond to an interview with the Times.
Many local hang gliders said Simoneau was fearless and, although his greatest passion was danger, he was cautious in the air.
“He was always a very cautious person,” said Gary Mell, a friend of 40 years, who wondered if Simoneau’s lack of home insurance led to his long stay. “If he had insurance, Arthur would be too smart a man to do that.”
News of Simoneau’s death shocked the region’s close-knit hang gliding community. Friends say he was one of the few old-school hang gliders who had been hang gliding for decades.
(Mary Marasco)
His friends say the world of hang gliding has lost one of its pioneers.
Kia Lavanfer, 40, said most of the old-schoolers from the era when hang gliding became popular, when people designed their own gliders using materials from hardware stores, have either died or gone. He said he gave up on it a long time ago.
Simoneau was one of the few who did neither.
“He didn’t live the life he used to,” Lavanfer said. Simoneau said he recently flew over Owens Valley to hang glid, as well as surf the Mavericks. “I always imagined he would hang-glid until he couldn’t walk anymore.”
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