Obituaries : Rev. Fred Jordan; Founded Skid Row Mission in 1949

The Rev. Fred Jordan, whose Skid Row mission feeds 1,000 people a day--and more than 6,000 each Thanksgiving, Easter, Mother’s Day and Fourth of July--died Sunday at Foothill Presbyterian Hospital in Glendora. He was 78.

A pioneer television minister whose “Church in the Home” was first broadcast in 1951, Jordan had been hospitalized since suffering a massive heart attack April 4, a family spokeswoman said. “Church in the Home” is still broadcast nationally and on four stations in the Los Angeles area.

The son of a Baptist minister, Jordan was born in the coal mining town of Thurber, Tex., on Aug. 7, 1909. He was ordained in 1934, and he opened the nondenominational Fred Jordan Mission--also known as the Soul Clinic Mission--at 445 Towne Ave. on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in 1949.

In addition to the meals it serves, the mission hosts an annual Christmas party where more than 30,000 toys and bags of groceries are given to poor children and their families.

“The real value is to create good will,” Jordan once said of the mission’s food program. “It lets them know that somebody cares.”

Jordan, who lived in Covina, expanded his missions to include orphanages, schools and churches in Korea, Mexico, Ghana, Liberia, Argentina and Hong Kong.

“But his heart has always been with the poor and homeless in America,” said his wife, Willie, the missions’ president. The missions will continue under her leadership.

As more families found themselves living on Skid Row over the past few years, the mission expanded its programs to better serve women and children. A separate family center for homeless women and children is being developed.

In a letter to Jordan last January, Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn lauded his work, saying the minister has been “both a brother and a father” to “countless tens of thousands of homeless people.”

“You have worked tirelessly for the homeless and the downtrodden. If it were not for you, tens of thousands of lives would be without health or hope.”

Jordan has also been honored by the South Korean government for establishing the largest Korean facility for mentally retarded, emotionally disturbed and physically handicapped children.

In addition to his wife, Jordan is survived by eight children and four sisters. His wife asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be made in Jordan’s memory to the new center for homeless women and children of Skid Row.