Rev. Peggy Bassett; Religious Science Leader

The Rev. Peggy Bassett, a onetime waitress who in midlife became a minister and went on to serve as the first woman president of the international United Church of Religious Science, has died. She was 73.

The Rev. Bassett died Oct. 11 in Huntington Beach after a seven-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, her church announced late this week.

The former minister of the Huntington Beach Church of Religious Science became president of the worldwide church in 1988. The group includes about 60,000 members in 172 autonomous church organizations, mostly in the western United States.

The Rev. Bassett became a minister at the age of 50 and built the Huntington Beach church from 40 members in the early 1970s to about 6,000. Overcoming a stutter, she became a charismatic speaker, espousing her own as well as her church’s philosophy of hope and affirmative thinking.

“My ministry is to turn people on to themselves,” she told The Times in 1988. “The only thing commensurate with this church is my own personal and spiritual growth. I take total responsibility for what happens here. I’m very convinced that what I’m saying is true because it has worked so well in my life. And I wouldn’t change one minute of it.”

A native of Arkansas, the Rev. Bassett moved to Bell with her family when she was 10. Married at 19 and soon divorced, she worked as a waitress, switchboard operator and secretary to support her infant son. As a secretary, she worked her way into real estate and property management in the San Joaquin Valley and, in the 1950s, on New York’s Long Island.

Returning to Los Angeles after a second failed marriage, the Rev. Bassett continued her work in real estate, once earning Long Beach’s award for woman of the year in business.

After her marriage to Fred Bassett, she decided to formalize her independent spiritual studies by attending the Ernest Holmes College School of Religious Science in Los Angeles, which is named for the denomination’s founder.

During her two decades at the Huntington Beach church, the Rev. Bassett became a founding member of Interval House in Seal Beach, a home for battered women, and earned the Year of Peace award from the United Nations Assn. and the 1987 Woman of Achievement award from the YWCA for bringing together Soviet and American young people.

The Rev. Bassett is survived by her husband, her son Wayne Hill, daughter Paula Childers, four sisters, a brother and seven grandchildren.

The family has asked that memorial contributions be made to the Orange County Chapter of the ALS Foundation.