TRAVELS GIVE SANTA CLARITA SENIOR PERSPECTIVE ON LIFE.

Byline: Victoria Giraud People and Places

SHIRLEY Blackburn, a resident of Santa Clarita since 1993, has had an exciting life of worldwide travel, and friends often suggest that she write a book about her adventures.

``It's been busy,'' Shirley admits with a laugh. But at 77, she's too occupied to write the book.

``I'm still living,'' she says.

From the 1950s to the early 1970s, Shirley traveled and lived with her husband, Fay, an electrical engineer, in such places as Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and Australia. When they had time off from his designing duties, they made sure they saw the sights in their country of residence or took tours of Europe, the Middle East and the Far East.

``You have to travel to learn to accept things, and to accept them graciously,'' Shirley reflected. ``You learn quickly to keep your mouth shut.''

She's had her share of seeing and getting caught up in violent incidents, especially during the turbulent 1960s. On a Holy Land tour, staying in a Jordan hotel, the Blackburns saw the machine-gunning of young schoolgirls. In Jerusalem, after taking a photo of a child being abused, Fay was held against a wall at bayonet point and forced to relinquish his film.

Taking their daughter, Suzanne, on a round-the-world trip before she went away to college, the Blackburns got stuck for a while in Burma. The political situation, she said, was ``like sitting on top of a volcano.''

Constantly running into political situations caused Fay to wryly comment, ``Any time my wife goes somewhere, they'll have a revolution.''

But Shirley loved her exciting life of travel and has not stopped. In the early 1950s, the Blackburns moved to Madrid. Fay designed radar sites, while Shirley did hospital charity work and found time to indulge her creative talents as a dress designer. She did some designs that she sold to famed Spanish dress designer Balenciaga.

Creative talent - ``I always drew'' - began at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. (She'll celebrate her 60th class reunion this year.) Shirley won a contest and designed the costume for Madame du Barry for the Norma Shearer film ``Marie Antoinette.'' After high school, she worked at Disney Studios inking and painting for animated features such as ``Pinocchio,'' and later worked for a time for Warner Bros.

Shirley's known her share of international figures. Her husband worked with rocket scientist Werner von Braun. Living in Taiwan, she was invited, along with other American and Chinese wives, to special teas held by Madam Chiang Kai-shek, whom Shirley described as ``cold, sharp and shrewd.'' At these formal teas, which were ``all a show,'' she said it was important to ``keep a smile on your face.''

In 1972, Shirley's husband died. The following year her daughter, Suzanne Shoemaker, gave birth, and ``they needed someone to take care of the baby.'' Since then, Shirley's helped to raise all three of her grandsons, now 23, 18 and 8.

She always managed to find time for traveling and was among the first Americans to visit the newly opened China in 1981. When the Shoemakers, in a cultural exchange, taught the performing arts and lived in a commune in Wuhan, China, in the mid-1980s, Shirley brought their two sons from the family home, at that time in Columbus, Ohio, for a monthlong visit.

Ever mindful of educational opportunities, Shirley arranged an exchange of pictures, books and letters between Columbus schoolchildren and the Chinese students in Wuhan. Besides a trip down the Yangtze River and a visit to Beijing, one of her memories of her Chinese stay was taking a two-hour bus ride with her grandson to a shop that sold peanut butter.

``The kids learned you don't always have what you want,'' she remembered and pointed out that their Chinese residence had only one small heater. To keep warm, ``We had to take turns standing around it.''

Besides helping to raise her 8-year-old grandson, Shirley is compiling a recipe book that will contain a combination of foreign recipes from her travels, dishes from her Swedish heritage and Southern cooking (Fay came from Arkansas).

She's also planning another trip. This March or next year, Shirley will visit Hungary and Czechoslovakia, one of the few places she hasn't been.

``I want to spend my time seeing something new,'' Shirley says.

She summarizes her philosophical view of life: ``I don't live in the past. I live today.''