Lesa Longstreet, the always elegant girlfriend of Greg Goodyear, popular assistant football coach at Culver City High School, was found dead of an apparent heart attack last Thursday, Jan. 21, at her home.
While there will be no formal funeral, a celebration of her life tentatively is scheduled for late February.
A fashion-conscious interior designer based in Palos Verdes, Ms. Longstreet looked the part.
A staple for a decade and a half in the top row of the stands at Culver High football games, she never was seen without stylish headwear especially.
Ms. Longstreet was 80 years old, and therein lies one of the intriguing tales of her prominent relationship with Mr. Goodyear.
Her 63-year-old boyfriend said he did not learn Ms. Longstreet’s true age until after she was dead.
From the time they met, on a chatline, in 1999, he had assumed she was seven years his elder, not 17. “If I had known that,” said Mr. Goodyear, “I probably would not have met her.”
When authorities were examining Ms. Longstreet’s driver’s license, they discovered she had been born July 21, 1935, making her 80. “I told them they were wrong,” said Mr. Goodyear, “because she always told me there was a problem with her birth certificate.”
The next day, Mr. Goodyear contacted his girlfriend’s son, Greg Longstreet. He said he didn’t know his mother’s true age.
Mr. Goodyear was and is nonplussed.
“When her sister told me she was 80 years old, I said, ‘My God, you are kidding me,’” Mr. Goodyear said. “I said I never would have gone out with her if I had known her true age in the beginning.
“She has been lying to me all these years. I told Greg, I said ‘Listen, I always want honest people because honesty is the most important thing in a relationship. But you know something? I am glad she lied to me because I wouldn’t have had the life I have had without her. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me her right age. But I really am glad she didn’t.”
In recounting the thrice-married Ms. Longstreet’s colorful life, Mr. Goodyear frequently invoked the phrase, “What woman do you know who would do that?”
For example, Ms. Longstreet was a passionate and intensely knowledgeable pro football fan while Mr. Goodyear’s taste runs to high school and college football. In the 1980s and early ‘90s, she held season tickets to Rams and Raiders games.
“Lesa even bought the book ‘Football for Idiots.’ She read that thing backward and forward long before I met her.
“What woman do you know…she would always go to most all Culver City football games. She always would sit – if you are looking at the press box where Mike Cohen sits – on the right hand side at the top.
“That was the only time she was early to anything,” he said with a laugh. “She would arrive 5:30 or 6 o’clock, long before the kickoff.”
Mr. Goodyear said that Ms. Longstreet “rarely” disclosed to anyone in the football stands that she was his girlfriend.
“There were very few things I did not like about her,” Mr. Goodyear said. “She was constantly late. By contrast, Lesa mostly was on time for her clients.”
“So I said to her, ‘Treat me like one of your clients. Treat me like one of your animals.’ She was a true animal lover. That was as much a passion of hers as football was.”
And then there was mealtime.
“Lesa was a wonderful gourmet cook,” Mr. Goodyear said.
“But I told her I was not a gourmet eater. Nothing fancy. I know what I like, and that is all that I need.”
In testifying about his love for Ms. Longstreet, Mr. Goodyear acknowledged what could her epitaph:
“She was a really classy lady.”
