The Witch of Wellington

I suppose every town and city has its urban legends. Our town’s urban legend was “the witch of Wellington,” a tall woman always dressed in black, wearing high platform shoes, with her long hair arranged on top of her head.

I first recall seeing her shortly after we moved here in June 2000. My daughter, then in middle school, and I were driving to Barnes and Noble, I think it was, and Megan suddenly pointed at this pedestrian moving along the sidewalk. “Mom, who is that?”

She was thin, wearing a long black dress and was probably six feet tall because of the platform shoes she wore. The sleeves of her dress were long, right down to the wrists, and she wore what looked like a black stocking cap. It was summer, really hot, a time of year when people here wear shorts, sandals, t-shirts. She walked slowly, deliberately, her head bowed, as though she was deep in contemplation about something.

I later learned that people referred to her as “the witch of Wellington.” She was a total mystery. No one seemed to know anything about her. But speculations abounded – that she was an eccentric artist, a famous person traveling incognito, a former spy, in the witness protection program.

In those early years, we saw her frequently, often on the same stretch of road that runs for several miles. I wondered about her, who she was, why she dressed the way she did, what her story was. Once, around 2005 or 2006, I saw her at our local grocery store, where everyone gawked as she moved slowly through the aisles in that black dress, those platform shoes, that stocking cap, selecting this or that from the shelves.

Another time, I was just leaving our gym and there she was, walking toward me with that same measured pace, in those incredibly high platform shoes that would ruin my feet in about two seconds. It must have been 90 degrees that day, but she was dressed the same. Her long black dress looked like it was made of wool.

A few years later, I was at the mall and was pretty sure that the woman coming toward me was the witch of Wellington – but she wasn’t wearing her black dress, stocking cap, or platform shoes. She was dressed in slacks and a cotton shirt and walked with a pronounced hunch, her gray hair piled in a bun on top of her head,. She moved as though she were in pain. She looked ill.

About a year later, I saw her waiting at a bus stop, an old woman in ordinary clothes using a walker.

On September 30 of this year, I received a text message from Karin, a friend and long-time Wellington resident.

Did you read that the “Witch of Wellington” passed away? So sad. She was the granddaughter of Levi Strauss…

Sure enough, the Palm Beach Post had done a piece on her death. Her name was Ray Suzan Strauss, and she had passed away on September 1 from an apparent heart attack. She was 86. She had lived in Los Angeles for years, where she was known as Lava Lady.

And yes, she was the granddaughter of Levi Strauss, the guy who started the denim company of the same name. Her home in LA is now on the market for $1.7 million, she owned property here in Wellington, but chose to live without electricity. She is survived by two daughters.

The mystery of who she was is solved. But the deeper mystery is not. Who was she really? She has been described as a solitary soul, sweet and friendly, but essentially a loner. No question that she was an iconic, mysterious figure for years in LA and then here in our town. But what is it that prompts a person to live in this sweltering heat without electricity? To walk for miles as she did in her black dress and stocking cap and platform shoes? What went through her head?

We’ll never know. Some people pass through life and leave their mark in strange, mysterious ways. They are archetypes of the unknown and the unknowable whose presence touches us with a kind of magical wonder that can be summed up in three words: Who are you?

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Happy Halloween!