Memorial Planned for Ex-Seal Beach Mayor Joe Hunt

A memorial service for former Mayor and City Councilman Joe Hunt will be at 2 p.m. Friday in Leisure World, an area that he represented for five years.

Hunt, a retired electrical engineer, died in his Leisure World home April 8 after a two-month bout with liver cancer, family members said Saturday. He was 65.

Hunt was a councilman from 1986 until last year, serving as mayor from 1988 to 1989. He also belonged to numerous community organizations.

Last June, he suddenly resigned from the City Council by walking out of a meeting, explaining to his colleagues, “I am physically and mentally weary. I am just plain burned out.”

Turning to Mayor Frank Laszlo, Hunt added: “Frank, I’d like to go out and enjoy this lovely Seal Beach spring night. I would like to take my briefcase and wish you goodby.”

During his years on the council, Hunt openly challenged the city to find a way to balance its budget.

Days before his resignation, Hunt angrily criticized the spending of $10,000 in private funding to hire an attorney to represent three council members in a lawsuit. In 1990, he told a reporter that Seal Beach would be bankrupt by 1993 because of state budget cuts.

“Joe was very adamant about keeping a balanced budget,” said former Mayor Edna Wilson, who sided with Hunt on several issues. “He tried very hard to get the city to keep reserves so that we would be in a good financial position.”

“I’ve lost a wonderful friend,” she said. “He was a very sincere man.”

Hunt was born Feb. 14, 1927, in Hurley, Wis. He graduated from Clintonville High School and served as an Army rifleman in Europe during World War II, said his daughter Lynn Brown, 40, of Idaho.

In the 1940s, he married Lucille Stowe, whom he later divorced. In 1951, he moved his family to Seal Beach to escape the cold winters of Wisconsin, Brown said.

A year later, he began working as an electrical engineer for McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach. He took early retirement in 1983, his daughter said.

After moving to Leisure World in 1981, Hunt joined the Seal Beach Planning Commission but did not consider a political career until five years later.

“He only did it because he had always been really active and saw that it was something that could keep him active,” Brown said.

Hunt was a former chairman of the Seal Beach redevelopment agency and a director of the Golden Age Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists Leisure World residents with medical services.

He was a member of the Orange County division of the League of California Cities, the West Orange County Water Board, the Kiwanis Club, American Legion Post 327, the Leisure World golf club and the Senior Seals baseball team.

He is survived by two daughters, Brown and Rozanne Holbrook, 45, of Newport Beach, and two grandchildren.