Humanitarian Deeds Bring Rights Panel’s Honors to 18

When Guadalupe Miranda heard that amnesty would be offered to undocumented immigrants, he saw his chance.

“I have a sort of a theory,” he said, his eyes disappearing into smiling half moons behind his glasses. “God gives all of us a chance to do something for others. I was waiting for something like this.”

An immigrant who came from Mexico legally 27 years ago, Miranda nevertheless knew the fear and loneliness of his Santa Ana neighbors, undocumented workers who had left families in Mexico. He signed up through Catholic Charities to counsel clients at his local parish church, Our Lady of Guadalupe Delhi, and over the past 15 months has helped 93 immigrants gather their papers, apply and qualify for amnesty under the new Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

As a result, Miranda is one of 18 otherwise unsung humanitarians who were honored Sunday in Costa Mesa by the Orange County Human Relations Commission.

‘Humble, Generous Individual’

After learning of the award, commission director Rusty Kennedy said Miranda told him, “ ‘There must be some mistake. I’m nobody.’ This is a really humble, generous individual,” Kennedy said.

Miranda’s parents, farmers from the town of Jerez in the Mexican state of Zacatecas, had lived in the United States on and off, his father working in mines, on docks or in fields until the Depression when they returned to stay in Mexico. Of four children, he was the only one born in Mexico, but the only one who lives in the United States.

In 1961, he had to wait only eight months for his visa to be processed by the U.S. consulate. Now, he said, it can take as long as 10 years.

Miranda, 48, eventually settled in Santa Ana with his wife, Martha, after working his way from fields to factories. He now operates a circuit-implanting machine for Tustin-based Silicon Systems Inc., which manufactures microchips. He also volunteers 10 hours a week, spending Tuesday and Thursday nights at the church, counseling immigrants.

“People come (to Orange County) seeking a better life. As a Christian, I don’t think there should be borders--either to keep them in or out. But the countries make laws, and we have to obey them,” Miranda said.

It hurts to tell applicants nothing can be done to help them qualify if they came to the United States after Jan. 1, 1982, the deadline set when Congress passed the new immigration reform act in the fall of 1986, he said.

Miranda tells those who don’t qualify: “Stay put. Wait and see what happens. In the future, maybe a miracle will happen and nobody will have to leave.”

On the other hand, he finds joy in seeing applicants return with their work permits, going back to Mexico to see their families after so many years. “They’re so happy. They can travel freely.”

In Phase Two of the amnesty program, which begins in November, Miranda hopes to continue to volunteer, helping immigrants obtain permanent residency and perhaps even citizenship.

After all these years, Miranda himself might apply for citizenship. “In the past, I thought they’ll still be calling me Mexican. What’s the use?

“Lately it doesn’t bother me what they call me. I think I might apply.”

Another honoree at the commission’s banquet Sunday evening was Jeanne Blackwell, 67, who said she grew up with a familial sense of duty to help others.

That, plus her ability to get by with little sleep, accounts for an exhaustive list of activities and accomplishments in the name of human rights, she said.

In the daytime, Blackwell resolves landlord, custody and other problems for low-income people as a staff member of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County. Evenings, nights and weekends, she works on additional cases on her own while serving as president of the Anaheim City Board of Education.

Easing Tensions

Blackwell also is board president of the Orange County Sponsoring Committee, a group of church-based community organizations that she said is working to “empower people to solve their own problems and to teach them how to work with governmental groups to resolve neighborhood problems and tensions.” And she participates actively in more than half a dozen other community groups.

Blackwell spent the first 30 years of her adult life as an elementary school teacher. Then, at age 61, she became a law student at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton. A widow, she had four children then in high school and able to care for themselves, she said.

Joining the Legal Aid Society, whose services are free, fit her concern for “people who don’t have representation,” she said.

The daughter and granddaughter of Republican activists, Blackwell grew up in Los Angeles and attended Los Angeles High School. “I grew up with my grandfather telling me stories of how his father and grandfather had an underground railroad station for escaping slaves and how as a little boy he would hide them.”

One day during the Depression, she caught her mother throwing just-raked leaves in their yard. Her mother explained that she did it to provide work for homeless men, after she realized they wanted to earn the handout she was giving them.

“I grew up with these ideas that individual dignity is essential to everybody,” Blackwell said. “Everybody had the right to be fed, everybody had the opportunity to work.”

On the school board, Blackwell has initiated an on-site child care program at two elementary schools before and after regular school hours.

Amnesty Worker

She also initiated a resolution to encourage legislation making it easier for undocumented immigrant families to stay together when only some of the members qualify for amnesty.

“I’m involved with the Parents as Partners in Education program. We do a presentation each year to work with low-income parents and minority parents to show them how they can work with schools from preschool through college to help (students) in school.”

She said she is a Republican who shares the party’s emphasis on certain values, such as individual responsibility. But she views herself as having been very independent in politics.

“I’ve always enjoyed listening and talking with people whose ideas are totally different from my own. If you don’t, it’s like living with an echo. I like living with conversation and a little controversy.”

Another recipient, Fountain Valley pediatrician Quynh Kieu, has long been regarded as a leading activist in the Vietnamese community.

“Vietnamese people often have been misunderstood as a group,” she told The Times last year. “The success of so many in business here has sometimes given rise to very antagonistic feelings.”

Specifically, Kieu, 37, has led the fight to obtain licensing for other Vietnamese-trained doctors whose credentials were questioned by U.S. authorities. She was certified by an American Medical Assn. committee that approved the education and training of 1,000 University of Saigon graduates who fled Vietnam when the capital fell to the communists in 1975.

Helped 2nd Generation

Her efforts to win legislation establishing a special certifying committee have resulted in licensing for members of the second generation of refugee students who enrolled before 1975 and were graduated before 1980 from the university.

She also has helped educate social workers to distinguish marks of folk-healing on some Vietnamese children from those of child abuse.

A resident of Huntington Beach, Kieu joined the Historical and Cultural Foundation of Orange County and created its Vietnamese council.

At 87, Felice Louria is the oldest honoree and deserves a “longevity award for commitment to human and civil rights,” commission director Kennedy said.

A native of New York, she moved to Orange County in 1966 with her late husband, Dr. Henry W. Louria Sr., who had retired. “I don’t think I was ever retired,” Louria said recently on the patio of her Santa Ana home, sipping coffee from a mug that read “Fight Litter.”

As a volunteer, “I looked to see where I was needed,” she said.

In New York, she was chief of the Bureau of Enforcement for Women in Industry and Child Labor for the state labor department. She also volunteered with the Consumers League, a national organization that fought for high labor standards. In the 1930s and ‘40s, their efforts resulted in better food and living conditions for California farm workers who had come from the South, she recalled.

In Orange County, she said she put together a Santa Ana center for the federally funded Job Corps, a program to help train high school dropouts for employment. Many youngsters in the program succeeded in finding jobs, she said, adding, “I loved those Job Corps kids.”

In the 1970s and ‘80s, Louria was also a “very dignified, intellectual” leader on the Orange County Interfaith Committee to Aid Farm Workers during negotiations to persuade supermarkets to boycott lettuce and grapes, said Jean Giordano, staff member of the Farm Workers Ministries in Orange County.

Her beliefs were so strong that her husband would ask her, when they went food shopping together, “What is it we can buy today?” Giordano said.

Theater Participant

Louria also has been active in the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Audubon Society, the National Organization for Women, the League of Women Voters, Jewish rights groups and the Orange County Housing Coalition, where she became an outspoken advocate for low-income housing. The coalition spearheaded a housing ordinance that required developers to provide affordable housing for Orange County residents for several years before it was revoked.

At age 84, Louria signed up to volunteer with the Stop Gap Theater Group, a nonprofit theater group that uses drama as a therapeutic tool to bridge generation gaps.

Over the years, Louria said she has learned that the best human rights activists have a “willingness to want neither side to be ahead.”

Other award recipients are:

- JoAnn Aguirre, a business teacher and counselor at Santa Ana High School who works to help Latino students stay in school by improving communication between non-English-speaking parents and teachers. Aguirre, 45, is also a sponsor of MEChA, a support group for Latino students.

- Mary Aguna, 57, who has worked to ease racial tensions between migrant workers and Costa Mesa homeowners by organizing neighborhood meetings. Aguna works as an instructional aide at both Pomona Elementary School and the Davis Adult Education School in Costa Mesa, where she teaches English as a second language. Aguna’s work at the Davis school is part of a special federally funded education and health care program for migrant families.

- Pat Callahan, 35, co-chair of the Elections Committee of Orange County for the past three years, who has worked to ensure that the civil rights of the county’s gay and lesbian community are upheld. Callahan also helped develop and distribute posters against AIDS discrimination around the county and is one of the founders of AIDS Walk, an annual fund-raising event for AIDS research.

- Dennis Clark, 45, who helps low-income people receive medical care as director of clinics for the UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange. He also works with the Human Relations Commission and other organizations.

Advocate for Disabled

- Robert D. Cummings, an advocate for the disabled, who has served as president of the California Foundation of Independent Living Centers and as a volunteer for the California Assn. of the Physically Handicapped in Orange County. Cummings, 39, has worked full time at the Dayle McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Tustin since it opened in 1977.

- UC Irvine social ecology professor John Dombrink, 35, who has documented the needs of the county’s poor and homeless and has worked as a volunteer for several community organizations on behalf of the disadvantaged. Some of the organizations Dombrink has worked for include Share Our Selves in Costa Mesa, the Irvine Fair Housing Council and Irvine Temporary Housing.

- Frank Forbath, 62, of Costa Mesa, who has been involved in helping the county’s poor for nearly 20 years. A founding co-chairman of Share Our Selves, an emergency health and counseling center for the poor in Costa Mesa, Forbath also has worked to improve conditions for the farm workers who live in the county’s migrant camps.

- Marion Harloe, 70, of Placentia, who has worked most of her life to make health care available to all people, especially the poor. A member of the Indigent Medical Services Task Force at UC Irvine, Harloe has organized community forums, letter writing campaigns and public education programs in behalf of the disadvantaged. Harloe, a full-time volunteer, is also a member of the League of Women Voters and the United Way Health Task Force.

Neighborhood Organizer

- Ruby May, 69, a board member and one of the founders of the Tustin chapter of the American Assn. for Retired Persons. May volunteers her time helping low-income seniors in a variety of ways. As a volunteer with the Disabled Elderly Task Force, May helped lower pet security deposits for seniors living in subsidized housing.

- Robert Melendez, 33, a leader in the Maple community of Fullerton for more than 10 years. Melendez is one of the founders of the Maple Area Action Committee, which has worked closely with the city in improving community relations by organizing neighborhood meetings with police and other city officials. Melendez has also served on the Police/Community Action Advisory Group and helped on the Mexican Cultural Events Council.

- Horace Mitchell, 43, vice chancellor for student affairs at UC Irvine, who has helped raise awareness of the different cultures represented on campus by implementing such programs as the annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. Mitchell also is acting president of the Volunteer Center of Orange County (Central-South) and on the board of directors of the Irvine Medical Center.

- Angie Padilla, 45, of Santa Ana, who has been a community volunteer since the age of 16. A secretary in the counseling center at Santa Ana High School, Padilla is also a volunteer in Padres y Maestros Unidos (which translates as Parents and Teachers United) to ease the communication gap between non-English-speaking parents, students and teachers.

Helps Mentally Ill

- Ramona Shneider, 57, president and one of the founders of the Orange County organization Helping Our Mentally Ill Experience Success, who helps to provide transitional living opportunities for the mentally ill. Shneider, of Tustin, also has served as president of the Orange County and California Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the Orange County Mental Health Advisory Board.

- Helen M. Shipp, 52, who has been a leader in Orange County’s black community for nearly 10 years. The mother of 10 children, Shipp founded the Orange County Black Historical Commission in 1979 and has served as president ever since. Shipp, a full-time volunteer, also started the annual Black History Parade and helped organize the Black Orange County Pageant.

Times staff writer Carlos Lozano contributed to this article.