Activist’s life was built on open-mindedness

After 9/11 while so many others waved the American flag, Gwen Felton hung the flag of the United Nations.

“She’s a real patriot, but was about working together for more peaceful solutions,” her youngest son, Richard, said as he reflected on his mother’s legacy. Gwen Felton, co-founder of the Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County, died in her home Aug. 4. She was 94.

When her five kids asked her what she wanted for Christmas about 10 years ago, she sent them a list of nonprofit organizations and charities. She instructed her kids to pick some and donate to them. That would be their gift to her.

And in the 1960s when her only brother, a state representative from San Diego, called to say he would be in town with a Democratic delegation having lunch with President Lyndon Johnson at the new Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, she said she would be busy that day. He could find her outside the hotel among the crowd, protesting the war in Vietnam.

“She was ageless,” said Susan Beechner, parish secretary for the St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Parish Church in Newport Beach. “She’s just one of those people that you thought would go on and on forever.”

She may have been only 5 feet tall and, as her husband Jim put it, “weighed 100 pounds dripping wet,” but every ounce of her was passionate about peace.

“Her convictions and her faith gave her the strength to take on anything thrown her way,” Richard said. “She was very real in who she was.”

Born in Los Angeles on Nov. 2, 1912, FDR, the New Deal and helping those less fortunate during the Depression had a huge influence on the activist during her late teens and early 20s, Richard said.

She would eventually meet her husband, Jim, in San Diego. Jim worked with her brother, Lionel Van Deerlin, at a newspaper there.

Felton was always up for a political debate at a dinner party, Richard remembered. In the early ‘60s, his mother took her beliefs on the road with Cesar Chavez to Delano, where Chavez would form the National Farm Workers Assn.

In 1979 the Cold War and the nuclear arms race led Felton to a peace conference in Pasadena.

She and Rev. Dennis Short came away with a vision — and they founded the Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County.

By all accounts, be it family or church members, Felton was opinionated. But she consistently stressed the importance of open-mindedness.

A memorial service for Felton will be at 2 p.m. Aug. 25 at St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Parish Church, 3233 Pacific View Drive in Corona Del Mar.