How did two dyed-in-the-wool East Coasters come to embrace life in L.A.?

This is a red-letter year for Douglas Capone and Linda Duguay: Not only did the marine biologists celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in February, next month marks the 20th anniversary of their relocation to Los Angeles to join USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Nothing predisposed the couple — by their own account, die-hard East Coasters — to move to L.A.

Capone, now the William and Julie Wrigley Chair in Environmental Studies and professor of biological sciences, grew up on the New Jersey Shore, walking the beaches, fishing, surfing and scuba diving.

Duguay, associate professor (research) of biological sciences and USC Sea Grant director at USC Dornsife, grew up in rural northern Rhode Island, earning her undergraduate degree in the Ocean State.

A keen surfer, Capone had passed through L.A. once as a teenager while hitchhiking from San Francisco to Mexico and on to Panama. His first impressions — of concrete and strip malls — had not been favorable.

Duguay had never visited L.A., and feeling little affinity with the stereotypes traditionally attributed to it, had no plans to do so anytime soon.

Capone and Duguay both had deep roots on the East Coast where they were close to their large, extended families.

Capone was born in a New Jersey house built in 1947 by his maternal grandfather, a carpenter who had immigrated from Italy.  (“That’s the joke,” Capone chuckles. “When people ask, ‘Are you related to Al Capone?’ I say, ‘No, we’re the New Jersey Capones.’”)

Duguay, who comes from a big French-Canadian family, grew up speaking French and English. She has 30 first cousins who still live in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

The future professors met while earning their doctorates in oceanography at the University of Miami Marine School and later, after marrying, landed jobs, first at Stony Brook University in New York and then in the nation’s Capitol — Capone at the University of Maryland and Duguay at the National Science Foundation in Washington D.C.

Indeed, the pair might never have visited L.A. as a couple if not for a twist of fate. Capone suffered altitude sickness while skiing in Colorado. He was due to fly on to Australia for a research project in the Great Barrier Reef, but when doctor’s orders kept him grounded at sea level for a week, he traveled to L.A. to recuperate with his old friend, USC Dornsife’s Jed Fuhrman.

Capone’s visit coincided with the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The Santa Monica freeway was out of commission, and Capone gained a new perspective on the city as he accompanied Fuhrman, McCulloch-Crosby Chair of Marine Biology and professor of biological sciences, while he navigated the surface streets from his home in bucolic Topanga Canyon to USC’s University Park campus. Capone was intrigued by what he saw in ways he hadn’t expected.

“The city was so many things,” he remembers of that first trip. “Massive, diverse, mountains to sea. And surfing and its lore — one of my boyhood loves.”

Early reservations about “La La Land”

Soon afterwards, Fuhrman invited Capone to apply for a position in marine biology at USC Dornsife and join the nascent USC Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies.

Capone and Duguay demurred.

Doug Capone and Linda Duguay during a recent break from their scholarly studies.

“We’d just moved to Maryland and I was getting a brand new laboratory, so it was very awkward to even think about a second move,” Capone said.

But while he loved life in Maryland, the couple’s home was several hours from the ocean. It was hard for the lifelong surfer not to get a little excited about the possibility of shredding some California waves.

Duguay, however, had serious reservations about relocating to the City of Angels.

“L.A.?” she remembers exclaiming. “La La Land? Movie stars, sports trainers, therapists? I don’t think so.”

But Fuhrman, who also hailed from the East Coast, didn’t give up. “He came back a second time and encouraged us to at least come out and take a look,” Capone recalls.

Capone eventually agreed to an interview, and Duguay accompanied him at her own expense — mainly to ensure he wouldn’t accept the job, she confesses.

Their visit, in late February, coincided with a particularly severe East Coast winter.

“It was sunny and warm when we got off the plane, and we were put up near the beach in Santa Monica and treated exceptionally well,” Capone recalls.

Duguay was struck by how much Fuhrman and his wife, Dorothy, loved L.A. “They really showed us the beauty of the West Coast,” she said.

She and Capone began to rethink their position, and after several trips and extended negotiations where the couple tried to decline several times, Capone says, “We caved, and the rest is history.”

Full-fledged Angelenos

Despite their initial reluctance, Capone and Duguay are now enthusiastic converts. Moving to L.A., they say, was the best decision they ever made.

Their home is only a mile from the ocean. Capone’s routine includes rising at 5 a.m. to surf or walk the cliffs of Palos Verdes before driving to work at USC.

Despite her initial misgivings, Duguay has become one of the city’s staunchest fans, referring to “the much-maligned L.A.”

It’s a city, she says, that has everything — from the cultural heights of the L.A. Philharmonic to the great outdoors to its tremendous ethnic and culinary diversity.

Capone, whose research focuses on the role and importance of microbes in major biogeochemical cycles, concurs. After 12 years in the post, he stepped down as chair of the Department of Biological Sciences on Aug. 15 before departing on a year-long sabbatical to France and New Zealand.

But wherever Capone and Duguay may roam, L.A. remains home.

“California is a state that invests in research, in infrastructure and in people,” Duguay says. “L.A. is such a vibrant place with so much culture and an amazing educational community.”

Capone nods his agreement.

“Whatever your research area is,” he says, “the opportunities here are boundless.

“We’ve never looked back.”

Read more about L.A. in USC Dornsife Magazine’s “Los Angeles” issue >>