The Griffiths: Nearly seven decades of love on McCadden, June
THE GRIFFITHS at the beach recently.
After 67 years of marriage, Stephen and Louise Griffith are still going strong. The two met at Stanford University at a party for the new freshman class. It was on the baseball diamond and, all these years later, the two remember it well.
“It was a lot of fun,” said Louise. “I was looking forward to meeting new people and seeing what it was all about.”
“I had been at an all-boys school for eight years, so you can imagine how I was,” said Steve, with a smile in his voice. He’d been accepted to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, but Stanford was the only school of the four that was co-ed at the time. “So, that’s where I was going,” he said.
The two were introduced by Louise’s friend Peggy Miller, and Steve told us his first thought was, “Wow.” As it turns out, Steve and Louise had grown up in the same area (this one), and his sister was in Louise’s class at Marlborough. Growing up, the two had never met because Steve had been at boarding school back east.
The couple told us that after they got talking, things “just went from there.” Their first dates were homework dates, and they’d go to the library and study together. Later, though, they told us they spent some fun evenings at a little beer bar near school called Rossotti’s.
STEVE AND LOUISE Griffith on their wedding day, 67 years ago.
After graduating, the Griffiths tied the knot. They stayed in the Stanford area for about a year, Steve finishing up extra credits for a changed major and Louise getting her master’s. Upon graduation — with Louise six months pregnant with their first child — the two moved back to Los Angeles.
Linda, the couple’s first child, was soon born, and Louise stayed home with her while Steve worked in the family business — the Griffith Company, a general contracting company founded in 1902. The two had their son Bob two years later, and Benjamin followed four years after that.
Louise and Steve speak of the child-rearing years of their marriage with a lot of love. “It was a very good time of life,” said Louise. “A lot of our weekends were taken up going to games and swimming meets. It was a fun way to meet all the families and the kids’ friends,” she said.
Steve had started working in the stock brokerage business by the time the boys were in middle school, and the couple told us it was a nice change for the family dynamic. Rather than needing to drive up to 300 miles a day getting to work sites, the father of three now had time to coach the kids’ football and soccer teams.
“The whole family is athletic,” Steve, who turns 90 in a few weeks, told us. “We skied and played tennis together,” he said. The family belongs to the Los Angeles Country Club (Louise’s grandfather was one of the founding members, and Steve’s dad was a club president) and the Bel Air Bay Club. They loved the fact that the latter membership gave the kids the opportunity to be near the ocean.
In 1978, when the two older children had gone off to college, the couple decided to move from the house they owned on North McCadden Place to their current house on June Street.
They’ve always loved this area. Steve and Louise, a Larchmont Chronicle Woman of Larchmont in 1982, like going to the Larchmont Farmers’ Market together on Sundays. Louise walks around the neighborhood with a friend several times a week. They go to Rite Aid and to the banks. “It’s very convenient,” said Louise. Steve misses the hardware store.
The two now have eight grandchildren, and the family is spread out between Colorado and the Carolinas, so the couple gets to do quite a bit of traveling. One son was stationed in Japan for many years, so the Griffiths ventured there multiple times. A few years ago, they were traveling with their daughter and renewed their vows in Canaan near Jerusalem.
We asked what has kept this couple committed for 67 years. “She’s patient and loving,” Steve said. “She’s a good, concerned wife who holds up her part of the battle.”
Louise told us she feels very blessed to be Steve’s wife. “He’s so thoughtful and takes such good care of me,” she said.
The two also told us that living through tough times together brought them closer. An only child, Louise, whose mother had passed away when she was 10, lost her father in 1962. “You grow together when things like that happen,” said Steve.
The Griffiths told us they have always had a very communicative family that is very devoted to one another. They enjoy doing things together. They go to movies, enjoy dinner or bridge at the country club and have a lot of mutual friends.
In fact, they’re still friends with Peggy Miller, that golden friend who brought them together. “I am perpetually thankful to Peggy,” said Steve. “I am, too,” echoed Louise.
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