A Woman of the World
Deborah Szekely proves that age is just a number
By Nan Sterman


Petite and bright-eyed Deborah Szekely settles onto the couch in the sitting room of her Mission Hills home. Files and paperwork surround her. Baskets on the coffee table hold emails her secretaries have printed out for her to read. On a pad of yellow-lined paper is her handwritten response to a question submitted by a recent guest to Rancho La Puerta, the resort spa that Szekely and late husband Edmond founded in Tecate Mexico, more than 65 years ago.

The wood-paneled room is filled with Asian folk art. A large window at one end looks out onto a purple-flowered jacaranda tree that leans gracefully over a rectangular lap pool. A window on the opposite wall frames the view of a metal sculpture called “Embrace Joy.” It’s life-sized abstract body stands legs extended, arms open wide, truly embracing all who gaze upon it.

This is the spot from which Deborah Szekely conducts business.

Deborah and Edmond Szekely are renowned for Rancho La Puerta and its sister spa The Golden Door, which they opened in Escondido in 1958. Today’s popularity of yoga, mindful living, and the mind/body/spirit movement in North America can be traced back to their original, dusty, “health camp,” where for $17.50 one could pitch their tent and stay for a week.

There was no electricity or running water. Guests came to Rancho La Puerta for Edmond’s lectures on healthful living, which he based on the teachings of the Essenes. This ancient Jewish sect of healers and philosophers often credited with writing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Part of those teachings is the interconnectedness of mind, body and spirit. The Professor, as Edmond was widely known, was a Hungarian philosopher who warned, for example, against herbicides, pesticides, cigarettes and alcohol. Instead, he extolled the virtues of pure air and pure water. Guests swam in the river, and took sunrise hikes up sacred Mount Kuchumaa (a tradition that continues to this day). They helped milk goats, chop firewood, tend an organic garden (one of the first in North America).

They also did calisthenics that would one day evolve into modern aerobics.

On the day she is interviewed, Szekely is elated, having just returned from the trip of a lifetime. She and 60 fellow travelers took a three-week tour of the Lost Cities of the world. They visited ten countries by private jet. “We heard lectures by historians and geologists,” she says, “We saw great ruins 2,500 and 3,500 years old. We saw the remains of palaces that were once four stories high with running water. I saw a seaside amphitheater in Lybia that once sat 2500 people. I was in Laos and Cambodia and Tibet…”

The trip ended in England where Szekely spent four days at the home of her daughter Sarah Livia Brightwood and granddaughter Emily. She then headed east and spent two-weeks cruising the Greek Islands on a trip hosted by Bill Moyers. As part of the trip, Moyers lectured on author, scholar, and mythologist Joseph Campbell.

Anyone would appreciate this trip, but it had special meaning for Szekely. Five years ago, Szekely was approaching her 80th birthday. Son Alex offered her a new Jaguar. She turned him down. “I told him that I wanted something that costs as much as a Jaguar” she recalls, “I wanted him and me to accompany me on a tour of the Lost Cities of the world. It was something I always wanted to do.”

Seeing the Lost Cities was a dream that had its roots in Szekely’s childhood when, from age seven until she was twelve, her family lived in Tahiti.

Szekely’s parents immigrated to New York from Europe around 1910, but they had very different backgrounds. Her mother was a small town heiress from Austria who had grown up in privilege and culture. but as a woman, she had very little personal freedom. Szekely’s father was a poor boy who fled Russia just ahead of conscription to the Russian army. The two met in New York, married, and had Deborah and her younger brother Joseph.

In the old country, Deborah’s father learned from his father to sew coats for Rabbis. In New York, he parlayed his sewing and pattern making skills into a successful cloak and suit factory. The family lived in a big house in Borough Park, where Szekely and her brother each had their own German nanny. The children studied a different language every year - her mother’s idea – and Deborah attended Montessori school where, she recalls, she was mostly an observer. “The chauffer would drop me off every day and I would make a beeline for the window seat. I would spend the day there, reading, not talking to anyone.”

Szekely says that her mother was “complicated,” while her father was very easy going. “My mom was a fanatic and a dreamer” she says, “When she adopted an idea, she went for it hook, line, and sinker. My dad was a sweetie pie. Anything Mom wanted was fine.” Then she adds with a chuckle “I’m the result.”

It was her mother’s idea to move to Tahiti as a way to escape the depression. Szekely remembers it as a wonderful time in her life. She quickly learned to speak Tahitian. She also discovered National Geographic magazine. “My piano teacher had a subscription. I would wait for him to be done with each issue so I could read it. If I did well in my lessons, he would even lend it to me to take home.”

Szekely’s traces her interest in the Lost Cities back to those National Geographic magazines. Over the years, she had thought about making the trip but it was quite expensive. Then, it occurred to her that visiting just two of those countries each year for several years would cost even more. That tipped the scales.

Reservations were made for her and Alex.
“And then came 9-11,” Szekely recalls.
“The trip was cancelled and the company sent us back our money.”

Soon after, Alex fell ill and died. It was devastating for Szekely. “I’ve always believed that as long as I do what is right, everything is going to be alright, ” she says. “I have been so fortunate that everything I’ve done has turned out well.” Alex’s death challenged Szekely’s belief. “We did everything right. I just didn’t think he would die.”

It took several years for Szekely to recover enough to make the trip. She looked forward to seeing the sights, but she also had the idea that the trip might bring about a revelation.

“Every decade or so,” Deborah Szekely says, “I have a new career that requires new reading, new studying, new needing to know more about some subject.” For decades, Szekely has been the pillar of Rancho La Puerta. But being a naturally curious person, she has wide ranging interests that have lead her to found and been involved in countless projects, organizations and agencies.

In 1978, for example, Szekely founded the Combined Arts and Education Council of San Diego County, which raised millions of dollars to support local cultural organizations. In the 1980s, she moved to Washington, DC to run the Inter-American Foundation, an independent governmental that supports self-help efforts of the poor throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the 1990s, Szekely founded Eureka Communities, a national leadership training program for CEOs of nonprofit organizations. She also co-founded and served as co-president for the U.S.-Mexico Commission for Educational and Cultural Exchange. She served as the U.S. Principal Delegate to both UNESCO and the Inter-American Commission on Women. Years ago, she even ran for San Diego City Council (“I was a pro-choice woman and way ahead of my time,” she says).

For the past several years, Szekely has been working on the New Americans Immigration Museum and Learning Center, a project designed to celebrate and inspire greater understanding of and respect for cultural differences. It has been a labor of love, but one that in the current political climate, might also be too far ahead of its time.

So, Szekely thought, maybe on this trip to the lost cities, “something would tell me what I would most like to do for the next ten years.” She wasn’t really looking for something, she explains, she just had a feeling that the message would come.

The message came, but it was not one that Szekely expected. As she observed ancient cultures and modern day cultures, she realized that, in her words, “we’ve come no place as people.” She had been raised with the belief that “the ancients” had tremendous wisdom. “I realize now that there is no such thing … wisdom exists in individuals (rather than cultures), but there is still war, and rich and poor, and pestilence and crime and so on.”

“I came home and was walking at the Ranch,” she says, “I looked up at Mt. Kuchumaa and I realized that I don’t have to look for what I am supposed to be doing. I am in the right place, doing what I am supposed to be doing right now. I am teaching people to have better lives. I just have to do more of it and do it better.”

The realization, Szekely says, has made the messages she shares with her guests even stronger – eat well, exercise, take care of your mind, your spirit and your body. These are things that you should do without thinking about them. They should be as natural as breathing.

From that pad of lined paper in her coffee table, Szekely reads her guest’s question, “Do spas have a philanthropic obligation to their communities?”

Szekely continues by reading her response. “Giving sharing, easing pain and suffering is what people who work in spas do all the time…. Just as the benefits of massage do not stop at the neck, a truly giving person, the term that describes a good therapist, does not stop helping people just because they are not paid in the coin of the realm.

Money becomes not irrelevant but rather is seen as just one kind of reward. The nurturer becomes the nourished.

Philanthropy becomes a fine example of energy shared. Today, when people speak of Alex, my son, the word kind as in ‘he was the kindest man I ever met’ becomes synonymous. He embraced his Jewish heritage and understood that the act of giving is equal to that of receiving. If I were to add his icon to this page, it would be an open hand, palm up…It was his dream that both the spa service givers and receivers would participate in bettering the life of all people, not just the fortunate few.”

Those who know Deborah Szekely, know where Alex got that dream.

For feedback, contact editor@sdjewishjournal.com.