Yuge/Waldorf – Report

Preliminary Report regarding the Yuge – Waldorf Controversy

Drafted July 28, 2015 (Referenced in the Fall 2015 Newsletter)

When William Scripps Kellogg died in 1977, he willed the five-acre Scripps Hall estate on Mariposa Street as an unrestricted gift to Scripps Home for the Aged on Calaveras. In the mid 1980s, the Home decided to sell the property to a developer, who agreed to save the Scripps Hall mansion but wanted to subdivide the rest of the property for new residential development. Scripps Hall was one of the last great Altadena estates, and Altadena Heritage (AH) originated as an Altadena Town Council committee formed specifically to save the estate as a whole. A letter-writing campaign successfully convinced the Scripps Home board to sell Scripps Hall not to the highest bidder but to someone who would preserve the estate.

That someone was the Pasadena Waldorf School (PWS). At the time of the sale, Takeo and Fumiko Yuge were living on approximately one acre of the estate, where Takeo had been the caretaker for many years – both before and after the family’s internment during World War II. Although the terms of the property gift to Scripps Home for the Aged included no provision conveying this part of the estate to the Yuges, the Pasadena Waldorf School (PWS) formalized a contract allowing them to remain on this land until their deaths. Takeo Yuge died two years later, in 1989, but his wife, Fumiko, lived another 26 years, dying at 100 years old on November 29, 2014. According to the contract, the house and land would revert to PWS on May 25, 2015, 28 years after the school had purchased the land.

In March 2015, AH launched a new program to recognize significant trees in the community. We announced the program at a workshop on tree preservation in March, where we handed out forms and presented a video on how to nominate a tree. Both the form and the video clearly stated that nominators had to have the owner’s permission to nominate a tree that was not on their property.

The Yuge sisters filed a form nominating the Torrey pine planted by their father, listing themselves as its owners. We contacted them, asking that they obtain permission from PWS as required on the nomination form. PWS initially refused the permission, but AH worked with administrators to allow the tree’s nomination. The school accepted the award at the Golden Poppy celebration on May 31, 2015, promising to preserve the tree regardless of how it develops its future campus. The Yuges were invited but unable to attend the event.