Retired Couple Leaves City With Love, Lasting Memories

GRAND TERRACE >> Grand Terrace has always been rich with history, and many have shared in the joy of living there. Vic Sumner and his wife Lynn are two such people that have extensively experienced and added to it. Born in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Vic is an 86-year-old telecommunications worker that has happily lived most of his life in this area with Lynn. They fatefully met each other through their mutual involvement in an organization known as the Telephone Pioneers of America. Vic started his work in telecommunications in 1947 as a lineman and did work on telephone poles in Los Angeles, as well as in the National Guard and the United States Army during the Korean War. The couple met after they went bowling with some friends as a part of a league within the Telephone Pioneers of America. When asked about his feeling during their first encounter, Vic said, “I fell in love when I first met her, and I’m serious.” After a missing phone number and a lot of help from friends, Vic and Lynn started their courtship in short manner. After they got married, they settled down in Grand Terrace and started growing more than 500 orchids, which eventually pushed them to start the Riverside and San Bernardino Orchid Society. The World Orchid Conference invited them to showcase their flowers in their contest where they placed second and received a plaque commemorating their victory and efforts. Later, maintaining the sheer number of orchids took its toll on the couple and they ended up giving them away to a contractor in Redlands. Vic then switched his attention from orchids to bonsai trees, which were much easier to take proper care of and provided a new way for the couple to enjoy horticulture in Grand Terrace. In recent years after having retired, the couple started the “Spit and Liars Club,” in a local doughnut shop designed to support and stay in touch with the local community. However, all good things must come to an end and so it is with a bittersweet taste in their mouths that the family has decided to move away from Grand Terrace. Their daughter is moving them to a house in Medford, Oregon and is setting aside an apartment with two large rooms just for Vic’s telecommunications collection which contains devices that date all the way back to the beginning of the first telephones. In regards to the family’s sentiments about leaving Grand Terrace, Vic and Lynn’s daughter captured it when she says, “It’s been a great and wonderful home for [us].”