Easing Ethnic Strife Elates County Official

When Rusty Kennedy arrived at work Monday he came with a mission and immediately set about seeing it through.

The task for the 37-year-old executive director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission was to defuse a growing controversy over remarks made by Westminster City Councilman Frank Fry Jr.

It was a situation, Kennedy says, that was “spiraling out of control.” The week before, Fry had voted to deny a parade permit sought by the South Vietnamese Armed Forces Committee and stunned community leaders by saying, “If you want to be South Vietnamese, go back to South Vietnam.” The resulting outcry drew international publicity and was even reported in South Vietnam.

By early morning, Kennedy had contacted Fry and posed the possibility of issuing an apology. By mid-morning he was drafting Fry’s two-paragraph statement and making sure it could be easily translated into Vietnamese.

By 10 that night, after a day of meetings with community representatives and several telephone calls with Fry, Kennedy ironed out the language.

“I felt elated when it was finally resolved,” Kennedy said Tuesday, several hours after a press conference where the statement was released. “It’s not unusual for the commission to play this role but to have such a high-profile situation is unusual. But I love the tension of it, the high drama of it. We do a lot of things here that rip your guts up, stresswise. But it keeps you going.”

Those familiar with Kennedy say his success in defusing emotions in Westminster comes as no surprise. As executive director of the commission for 8 years, he has won praise from colleagues and community groups throughout Orange County.

“I have been able to see him mature and develop over the years and his social conscience is very evident,” said Irma Rodriguez, dean of admissions and records at Fullerton College and a commission member for 14 years. “He has such a good relationship with the community; he’s very open to suggestions and ideas. It’s the ability to bring parties together that have not been able to communicate.”

For Kennedy, the job has provided excitement and a chance to put the values instilled in him at a young age into practice.

“I think my position with the commission is ideal,” he said in a telephone interview. “I can make a living serving the (Board of Supervisors) and at the same time serve a higher authority and the values of building a community where people can live free of racism, intolerance and prejudice.”

Upholding values has always been vital to Kennedy, a Fullerton native who 10 years ago purchased from his parents the house where he was reared; he lives there now with his wife and three children.

As Kennedy grew up in the county, fertile with orange groves and wheat fields, most of his playmates and neighbors were white and Protestant. It was not until junior high school that he was exposed to an ethnically integrated environment.

Parents Ralph and Natalie Kennedy were community activists committed to the goals of integration and racial harmony.

Ralph Kennedy was chief of guidance and navigation at the Rockwell Corp. but eventually left the job to become a low-income housing expert. Natalie Kennedy was a homemaker and then became a teacher.

They worked for fair housing laws in the late 1960s and Rusty worked with them, going door-to-door to campaign for fair housing.

“They are two of the greatest people I’ve ever met,” Kennedy said. “I learned a lot from them about values and the importance of giving back to the community.”

He said he remembers those days as a time when the John Birch Society was a formidable and threatening force in the county. Birchers had once questioned the Kennedys’ minister to ask if he thought they were Communists. “I remember being rather afraid of the Birch Society,” Kennedy said.

After graduating from the University of Redlands with a degree in sociology, Kennedy sold shoes in Massachusetts, swept floors in Louisville and organized migrant workers in Chicago.

He eventually got involved in politics, managing his father’s unsuccessful bid for a City Council seat in Fullerton and a successful campaign by his wife, Anita Varela, a member of the board of the Fullerton School District.

Kennedy said he is not interested in politics as a goal for himself, adding that he “can’t remember people’s names” and is unable to “smile when I’m not happy.”

Instead, he foresees a long future as director of the Human Relations Commission helping to achieve for the county a more “realistic reputation” in the area of tolerance, he said.

“I think across the board, liberal and conservatives feel this commission is doing something important,” he said.