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18 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | MAY 2016 By Laurie Larson "Determination, thy name is Eileen." That's not a quotation! It isn't? Well, maybe it should be. Maybe it will be. Read on. I first met Eileen Gilbert several years ago when she was teaching a group of women the game of billiards. At the time her play "Gramma Mia" had recently been performed here and was a hot topic of conversation. Always fascinated by human behavior, I asked Eileen how she had learned to write, choreograph, direct and produce a musical and how many she had done before. Her answers, "I taught myself " and "this was my first one" stunned me. I never forgot that brief conversation. When the opportunity arose for me to write another article spotlighting residents who first discovered or displayed amazing new talents only after moving to Four Seasons Beaumont, I immediately thought of Eileen and jumped at the chance to interview her. She very graciously agreed. We set a date and when the time came, I ventured out. The day was rather warm and breezy, a rather typical spring day in Beaumont. I found her Springdale home easily. Eileen had made room for my car in her garage. When I stepped out of my car I swear the weather had changed. Was the air a bit cooler and did it taste ever so slightly of salt? "Welcome to my beach cottage" Eileen said. "This is my dream home." As she showed me through her charming bungalow, decorated mostly in white with pastel touches, she went on to explain that after she retired from 42 stress-filled years as a legal secretary and paralegal, she looked into three other places before she came to Beaumont. She first bought a house in Las Vegas, then the Tri-Cities, Washington area, then in St. George, Utah. None of those places were a good fit so she began researching 55+ communities until she found Four Seasons at Beaumont. Her only question was, "Where's Beaumont?" So she moved here, into a community so new that there were dirt roads, no gate, no clubhouse. But she found promise in one of the Springdales and set about to bring some of the beach to Beaumont. And she succeeded. Her beachy decor took me back to many summers of my life which were spent blissfully in the ocean, on the sand, and in a beach house in Malibu. A new house wasn't the only exciting new item in Eileen's life. She also met Pete Antoine the first week she lived here. They've been together for 10 years now, married for four in November. But Eileen didn't want to give up the house she loved so much and Pete didn't want to give up his big TV and other 'man cave' touches, so they came to a great decision: they each kept their own house. So now they live in both. Sort of like snowbirds, but with a shorter commute. "I was extremely shy as a child," Eileen told me. But she always had a wonderful imagination which allowed her to escape her somewhat painful childhood, and later, a sometimes unhappy marriage. She A Beach Cottage in Beaumont continued on the following page FOUR SEASONS SPOTLIGHT