Still the life of the party

BARSTOW • Furs, feathers, and sequins fills Liz Mauk’s computer room. She fingers through dozens of costumes — a pearl-covered dress her mother made, a patchwork coat she wore for Halloween, a skirt made of neckties, and hats, lots of them.

Mauk, 77, picks up one hat, gently so she doesn’t disturb white feathers or the doll perched on the top. It’s so large it almost dwarfs her.

Mauk has been a fixture in Barstow since 1964. Newspaper clippings and old photographs of her, her mother, Dora Brown, and the other people she’s known since she moved to Barstow decorate the walls. In most of the photos, Brown and Mauk wear huge feather-decked hats and long dresses. And even though her Southern Baptist roots discourage it, Mauk will dance, and has danced, for just about any one.

“I danced four days before my 77th birthday,” she said, swaying to the strains of Glen Miller’s “In the Mood,” which came from a pot of dancing flowers. “I don’t get paid to dance. I dance because I love to dance.”

Mauk has left her mark on many lives in Barstow. Many soldiers have received a Thanksgiving or Christmas meal with a Barstow family thanks to Mauk’s efforts with the Hands Across the Desert Program. She has organized fashion shows and beauty pageants, and led many of the military wives at Fort Irwin through Barstow, showing them the best places to get shoes, clothes and groceries. And, during the 1980s and 1990s, several young brides opened their doors to find Mauk standing there with a male stripper.

“She’s done so much,” said Brenda McElfresh, who was the Community Relations Officer at the National Training Center in 1983 when she met Mauk. “She was in charge of putting on the first Miss Senior Barstow pageant, probably in the early 1990s. She did Hands Across the Desert for five or six years, where the city opens up their homes to soldiers on the Holidays.”

Despite all the things Mauk has done, she said winning the Barstow Area Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 Spirit of Barstow Award at this year’s Barstow Community Recognition and Instillation Banquet was such a shock, it left her crying from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. the Sunday following the event, she said.

“I was dumbfounded,” Mauk said. “Totally shocked.”

Mauk was nominated by Col. David Booze of the National Training Center, McElfresh said. McElfresh wrote the nomination letter.

“She was just a real good mentor,” she said.

Mauk, who began the Barstow chapter of the Red Hatters Society, still dresses up in outlandish clothes. On Halloween, she made herself up, and wore one of her costumes and a wig. And she still does the bump-and-grind dance for anyone that’ll ask her to.

“Sometimes she’ll come out of a cake, sometimes she’ll go to somebody’s house dressed in glitz and take them out to dinner,” McElfresh said. “These guys may be 25 and she’s not afraid at all. She’s the life of any party.”

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com