He had wandered the world, selling butter in czarist Siberia, fighting in France during World War I, walking the Appalachian Trail with his dog — and strolling down Colorado Boulevard, unofficially bringing up the rear of the Rose Parade one year.
But when he got to Laguna Beach, Eiler Larsen was so captivated by it that he stayed and welcomed the rest of the world there.

Laguna Beach returned the salute, naming him its official greeter. In good weather and bad, Larsen would stand on South Coast Highway waving to drivers and pedestrians and booming out a big hello.
A block-long lane bears his name, and two life-size statues on South Coast Highway — where he called out greetings for 33 years — honor the bearded, wild-haired fixture of the quirky, artsy seaside town.
“They may think I’m crazy,” Larsen once said, “but when a motorist comes to town, tired and weary of the traffic, and smiles when he leaves, does it matter what they think?”

Laguna’s greeting tradition dates to the 1880s, when Old Joe Lucas, a Portuguese fisherman and shipwreck survivor, greeted stagecoaches en route to Santa Ana or El Toro. Like the Roman sea god Neptune, he carried a trident; and he swore like, well, a sailor.

Lucas died in 1908. Three decades later, Larsen, then 48, arrived. A hulk of a man, Larsen worked part time as a gardener before he donned his red sport jacket to greet passersby.

Larsen was born in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1890. At 19, he traveled to Siberia, where he sold Danish butter. He soon immigrated to the United States and attended college in Minnesota. But wanderlust caught him, and he hopped a freighter to South America, according to Times articles.
During World War I, he returned the U.S. and enlisted in the Army to fight in France, where his right leg was wounded by artillery fire. He walked with a cane the rest of his life.
During the 1920s boom, Larsen worked as a bank messenger on Wall Street. He later walked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia with his dog, Happy, according to The Times’ archives. Early in the Depression, he caught the “greeting bug” and began hailing visitors in Washington, D.C. As Larsen stood waving near the White House, President Hoover, from the back of his limousine, “waved to me when he saw me,” Larsen said.
California’s warmer weather attracted Larsen and, along with Dust Bowl migrants, he picked fruit in the San Joaquin Valley before heading south to Laguna Beach, a place that artist friends had recommended. Beginning in 1938, Larsen was cast for several years as Judas in “The Last Supper,” Da Vinci’s painting featured in the Pageant of the Masters, a still-popular annual event where people pose in tableaux vivants of famous paintings.
Meanwhile, he worked on and off as a gardener and at the Pottery Shack, where he greeted customers and travelers, shouting, “Helloo-oo, delighted to see you!”
According to Times accounts, Larsen began to garner public attention in the early 1950s, when he walked from Laguna to Riverside to attend Easter sunrise services atop Mt. Rubidoux —and for marching alone and greeting the crowd at the Rose Parade.
He spoke six languages — English, Danish, Spanish, Russian, German and French — and was a ravenous reader who spent his small Army pension on science and philosophy books, which he bought at a local bookstore and then donated to the library and visitors. He also bought candy to hand out to children.
“I don’t care who they are, they all respond to goodwill,” Larsen once said of the residents and the visitors he greeted. “Some don’t even speak English, but they understand anyway. It’s my eyes. They project. They reach every car and every person, and they give the message of goodwill.”

In 1959, some residents complained that he was a nuisance and demanded that his “booming voice” be silenced. But a poll by the town newspaper, The Times reported, showed that 88% of residents wanted Larsen to stay.

Four years later, his simple acts of kindness prompted the Laguna Beach City Council to proclaim him the town’s official greeter — an unpaid position with occasional benefits, such as free meals at local restaurants and a low-rent room at the Hotel Laguna.

A group of residents who were fond of Larsen paid the bills because they liked what he added to local color.

In 1967, that group raised more than $3,000 to send Larsen home to Denmark for a six-week visit after he suffered a stroke. In Aarhus, where his brother had once been mayor, Larsen said, he was treated like royalty.

But the stroke and emphysema slowed him down significantly. In the next eight years, he was often missing from his post along the highway.

His fans missed him and sent him hundreds of cards and letters. “I can’t possibly answer all the letters, but people must know I appreciate them because they send more letters each time,” Larsen told The Times.

Larsen died at a Capistrano Beach nursing home in 1975, at age 84. He was buried at Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood.

Five years after Larsen’s death, an unemployed actor named Cano Graham stepped into his virtual shoes to research Larsen’s character for a film or play. He did it for a few weeks, a few hours a day. “I had to be out there on the street to get a handle on his character,” Graham told The Times.

“Larsen was no slouch. He was a very diversified man, but only a few really knew the breadth of his intellect,” Graham said.

As Graham stood there, “people [came] to me with anecdotes about Eiler, and some even have tape recordings of conversations with him,” Graham told The Times in 1980. “Everybody knows something about him, and I now have a suitcase full of information, even some of his letters and other personal correspondence.” It’s not clear whether anything came of Graham’s research.

In 1981, a former hairdresser who looked like Larsen took up the tradition and lasted 25 years. His legal name was Number One Archer, bestowed by his parents, who were surprised by the birth of twins.

Archer took Larsen’s post until illness put an end to his greeting gig. Since he stopped his waving sometime last year, no one has assumed the tradition. Only the two statues remain, motionless, to do Larsen’s memorable job.

“He was a very diversified man, but only a few really knew the breadth of his intellect.”
CANO GRAHAM, actor who researched Larsen.

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He came a long way for a vagabond. After all, how many Orange County people have statues in their likeness displayed in pulic places?

John Wayne. Slain Arab American civil-rights leader Alex Odeh. And Eller Larsen, whose carved-wood image is more a treatment to his endurance and personality than celebrity or civic achievement — although the beloved Laguna
greeter had some of that, too.

Nearly 20 years after his death, Larsen’s legacy endures in the redwood sculpture standing out¬side The Greeter’s Corner Restaurant —one of the most scenic and cozy breakfast nooks in Laguna Beach.

For those who don’t know, Larsen was the Danish immi¬grant who often stood near the corner of South Coast Highway and Forest Avenue in Laguna Beach, waving and smiling at passers-by for nearly 40 years. City leaders proclaimed him Official Laguna Greeter in 1963 (count that as a civic achieve¬ment).

The Greeter’s Corner menu offers omelettes and other egg dishes for breakfast, as well as burgers, sandwiches, seafood, salads and appetizers for lunch and supper. If you step into the greeter’s footprints outside, then you’ll probably want to try the breakfast special named after him: scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, onions, tomatoes and fried potatoes ($7.65).

While the food is hearty and the atmosphere casual, probably the best thing about the Greeter’s Corner is the wood deck overlooking Main Beach.

If you lounge on the deck over a plate of eggs and pota¬toes, it is apparent why Larsen hung around so long. The sea is so close you can smell it. The sidewalks are busy with skaters, strollers, beach combers, tourists, delivery boys and meter maids. And the Pacific horizon is the back¬drop:”Can you imagine a more beautiful spot in the world?” asks Leslie De Duijtsche, a waitress at Greeter’s Corner and something of a celebrity in her own right.

Known as the “Purple Lady” among regular customers, De Duijtsche has served food at Greeter’s Corner since moving to Laguna from Detroit 15 years ago.

“I love looking at the ocean all -day long,” she says. “I’m 53 years old, and I feel like it’s the first day of summer vacation and I’m still a teen-ager.” But why do they call you the Purple Lady? “I just always feel so good when I wear purple,” she says. Rules say Dc Duijtsche has to wear a white shirt and black slacks to work. But check out the purple satin slippers with the purple garland bows. Is everything she owns colored purple? “My toothbrush, my telephone — everything in my apartment, from floor to ceiling, is purple,” she says. With a gig like that, we might be in store for a statue of De Duijtsche.

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