She’s a legend in her own time.

At 95 years old, Sheila Lodge has forgotten more than most of us will ever know, and she is still going strong.

Santa Barbara’s longest-serving mayor, a woman who has spent nearly four decades in public service, was honored Tuesday by the Santa Barbara City Council, a week after receiving a resolution from the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.

“This is such a special place, and I am so passionate about Santa Barbara,” Lodge said Tuesday. “It’s been a pleasure. There have been some tough times.”

Lodge served as Santa Barbara mayor for 12 years, from 1981 to 1993. She was the first woman to serve as mayor. Before that, she served on the City Council from 1975 to 1981.

During her first run on the Santa Barbara Planning Commission, Lodge served for three years. In December, she stepped down from the commission to have hip surgery, after serving for 16 years.

As political royalty goes in Santa Barbara, Lodge is definitely on Mount Rushmore. The Los Angeles Times wrote about her in 1986, where journalist Michael Fessier Jr. wrote: “Mayor Sheila Lodge, 58, an elegant woman who tends toward mannish suits and wears her hair in a no-nonsense bun.”

Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Feldman wrote in 1992 about a Santa Barbara controversy over whether to designate the Los Banos Pool at the Santa Barbara Harbor as historic.

Lodge, he wrote, questioned whether the Depression-era outdoor plunge, located a stone’s throw from the Pacific, “boasts the architectural grace to qualify as a city landmark.”

“I’ve had dozens of letters from people saying it should be declared a landmark because their mothers and grandmothers and everyone else learned to swim there,” Lodge said. “But it’s an undistinguished building, and I see no reason to protect it.”

Lodge calls it as she sees it. She wrote a book titled “Santa Barbara: An Uncommonplace American Town.” The book tells the story of early Santa Barbara and its history of battling development in an effort to preserve its small-town charm.

A 1968 proposal, called El Mirasol, would have built two nine-story, 107-foot-tall condo towers at the site where Alice Keck Park Memorial Garden stands. The Planning Commission said the proposal was “out of character with the surrounding area and with the community as a whole.”

Lodge’s book details the history.

The developers ran five full-page ads in the News-Press “saying that the council would be responsible for whether or not the city would move forward or remain a ‘sleepy little village.’”

Sound familiar?

According to Lodge’s book, the developer threatened that if the condo towers were not approved, “200 cheap, mass-produced small apartments with only profit in mind” would be built there. 

Activists ran small, classified ads pushing back against the plan. Even though the city’s ordinance limited the height of residential buildings to 45 feet, the council at the time granted a variance to allow 107-foot towers. 

Lodge wrote that Terry Davies, a research engineer, and Estelle Busch and Frances Yulo, “neighborhood housewives,” as Lodge’s book described them, found an attorney who would represent them for free. They filed a lawsuit, and a judge ruled that the city violated its own ordinance.

“That would have been horrendous,” Lodge said of the towers in her book. “The town really would have changed. Housewives can make a big difference. It doesn’t matter if you have money and power in other ways.”

Lodge was born on a dairy farm in Arcadia and has lived most of her life in California. She taught school and did social work in Annapolis, Maryland.

At the City Council meeting, Mayor Randy Rowse read a proclamation for Lodge and noted that they first met decades ago when they sparred over the neon sign outside of the Paradise Cafe, which he owned at the time.

“Since then, she has become a very trusted and very valuable friend, a mentor, someone who I refer to particularly a lot when it comes to land use, housing and design, which I am usually wrong on, and she’ll usually point that out to me,” Rowse said. “It’s been a great relationship. I am really proud to have her as part of our city’s legacy.”

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, at the request of First District Supervisor Roy Lee, also recognized Lodge recently. In a bit of divine fate, about 200 people, in a standing-room-only crowd, packed the room that day. They were there to vote on whether to re-activate an oil pipeline, but the giant crowd rose to their feet and gave Lodge a standing ovation when they learned she was being recognized.

“I just want to say thank you for everything you have done,” Lee said. “I have nothing but trust, love and respect for you.”

Lodge gave a short speech, where she urged the board to side with the environmentalists and against giving the oil company, Sable, permits to restart a pipeline.

“I am not mayor anymore, but I urge you to continue to protect this special place. … Please do not enable Sable,” Lodge said. “May you all continue to work to keep Santa Barbara County the special place that it is.”

Santa Barbara City Councilman Eric Friedman said the first time he met Lodge he was a third-grader at Monte Vista Elementary School. The class did a field trip to the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, and Friedman met Lodge.

“Everybody thought it was so cool that we got to meet the mayor,” Friedman said. “It was the most exciting thing of the whole trip.”

A couple of nights later, Friedman said he was watching television with his parents and they saw Lodge. Friedman said he told his parents, “The mayor, I know her.”

“Sure enough, years later, I actually have gotten to know you,” Friedman said to Lodge, “and when I was a newbie council member you gave me a lot of great advice, and I really appreciated it.”