My Cousin was an Interior Designer in Los Angeles

Adele Faulkner designed this room for Carmen Miranda.  Image from AD in the '40s.

My 3rd cousin 1x removed, Adele E. Devoe Loyd (died Adele Faulkner Quinn) was a very successful interior designer and syndicated columnist:

Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA)
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
Edition 1, page: Obituaries
by Robin Hinch 

Adele Faulkner-Quinn lived life by her own design - An eye for style and a heart for those in need made her more than whole. 

Adele Faulkner-Quinn used to say that "a life without productivity is an unhappy life.'' By that standard, Adele was deliriously happy. 

Whether at work as a nationally known interior designer or as a longtime volunteer for Interval House Crisis Shelters, she always had a new project in the works well before completing the first. 

She was a whirlwind of activity -- both physical and mental -- who exhausted the far-younger shelter staff members (they say a day with Adele was like having the blood drained out of them) and regarded sleep as a necessary evil. So she did it in short shifts: four hours of sleep, six hours of work. 

After retiring from her design company, Faulkner and Associates in Los Angeles, she spent the next 20 years guiding the construction, renovation or redesign of Interval House's four Orange County facilities for battered women and their children. Her eye for detail and concern for the project's clients had her calling Interval House staff at midnight to ask things like, "Where do they bathe the toddlers?'' as she pondered the best way to arrange the rooms. 

No one who met Adele forgot her, and no one slipped away without learning something from her, from design tips to remembering to dust the tops of door frames (she was big on cleaning.) 

Few got away without donating something. Each time she entered her bank, she'd ask the manager, "When are you going to give those sofas to Interval House?'' They are now in Quinn Residence, named after her. 

On job sites, she sometimes complained to the contractor about inferior materials. He'd retort, "Well, you ARE getting them free.'' 

She'd give him a stony look and say evenly, "When you're giving to the less fortunate, when you're doing work for those that need our help, you need to give the same quality -- if not better -- as for your very best client.'' 

They did, and later thanked her for the honor. 

Adele was 88 when she died Sunday. 

She grew up in Southern California going to building sites with her contractor father. She taught herself architecture and design, and had such a collection of books on the subjects that libraries were vying for it. 

She taught at the UCLA School of Design for many years, in addition to designing home interiors for the rich and famous, including the Mattel (toy) family and comedian Harold Lloyd. 

She also worked for Carmen Miranda -- until she asked Adele to make casts of her legs and use them as lamps. "That,'' said Adele, "is where I draw the line.'' 

Her name appeared frequently in architectural digests -- and also in L.A. gossip columns. 

She was a colorful and eccentric figure in her exotic outfits and outlandish hats. 

She was married four times, the fourth to Bill Quinn, former editor of the Seal Beach Journal. They lived in an artfully converted fishing shack in Sunset Beach and were married 25 years when he died of cancer in 1988. Her only son died of cancer in 1990. 

It was through Bill, who covered its opening, that she learned of Interval House. She began volunteering in 1983, and it became the focus of her life. 

She solicited donations, wrote proposals, wrote a guide to cleaning the houses (if you didn't know how to clean when you entered Interval House, you most certainly knew when you left) and did the chore charts. No job was too menial for Adele. 

She was vain, funny and direct. When hospitalized after an accident, she was demanding blueprints in the emergency room. Her hair was always coifed and lipstick freshly applied. 

She told staffers they should always apply excellence to what they were doing. "Whether buying toilet paper or doing the chore chart, do it like a master,'' she'd say. 

She turned each of the shelters into a work of art -- carrying out the international theme of the Interval House program. She always said she wasn't a counselor, but many clients found her to be both an inspiration and a wonderful listener. 

Adele took pride in her appearance and in her work to the very end. If she had placed a silk ficus, and returned to find it moved, she promptly returned it to the spot she had chosen. 

She "adopted'' all her friends, calling one her adopted daughter, another her adopted son. Carol Williams, executive director of Interval House and many years her junior, she called her adopted mother. 

Adele never hesitated to quip that security was having a mother younger than you are.

Adele was a great granddaughter of Marquis Hartley (1836-1924), an older brother of my 2nd great grandfather James Monroe Hartley (1846-1904).

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.