2 Activists Give Thanks for Love and Life

Thanksgiving Day was still 35 hours away, but at United Methodist Church in North Hills, the spirit was already in abundance.

Inside the kitchen, 16 turkeys were roasting under the supervision of 79-year-old Verna Porter for a Wednesday feast for the homeless and needy. At the back of the Fireside Room, 75-year-old Wanda Klein, aided by a granddaughter and great-granddaughter, dispensed bags of donated groceries to hungry families.

This bustle of beneficence served as a backdrop as a meeting of the North Hills Community Coordinating Council came to an end. There was a familiar face near the fireplace--Bobbi Fiedler, the former congresswoman and school board member. After she sidled next to political activist Harry Coleman and he draped an arm across her shoulders, they soon revealed just why, for them, this will be a very special Thanksgiving.

A savvy political observer later explained the Fiedler-Coleman alliance this way:

She’s just wild about Harry. And he’s just wild about her.

*

She’s 60 and he’s 59 but, as the cliche puts it, they looked like teenagers. They were, as another cliche puts it, glowing. Verging on ga-ga. For a pair of tough-as-nails political operators bent on tearing asunder the City of Angels, they sure make a cute couple.

A May wedding has been planned. The date and location are set. Today, Harry Coleman will be cooking up a 40-pound turkey to share with his fiancee’s family.

“This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life,” Coleman said.

“I feel really lucky,” Fiedler said, “to have met and fallen in love with someone I’m so proud of.”

They talked more about how thankful they were that love would blossom at this stage of their lives. They talked about their common interests--politics, especially--and how they look forward to having one another for years to come.

Their bond, it seems, is strengthened by their experience with life’s travails.

Because she spent so many years in the public eye, Bobbi Fiedler’s personal struggles are well known.

Fiedler was a Valley housewife who rose to prominence during the anti-school busing battles of the 1970s, unseating the school board president in 1977 in her first run for office. Three years later, she narrowly defeated 10-term Rep. Jim Corman to serve in Congress. After six years in Congress as, in the words of one political writer, “a combative suburban populist,” she gave up her seat in an unsuccessful run for Republican nomination for U.S. Senate.

Fiedler, a divorced mother of two, married her longtime political consultant and former chief of staff, Paul A. Clarke, in 1987. Three years later, she was found to have lymphoma, a systemic cancer. A combination of chemotherapy and bone-marrow treatments helped her battle back from the life-threatening disease. Never far from political life, she accepted appointments to the state Lottery Commission and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency.

When Fiedler resigned from the CRA in early 1996, citing personal reasons but offering no public comment, many assumed her condition had worsened. But in fact, her garrulous husband was suffering from lung cancer. He died last December.

Over the months that followed, she says, her old friendship with Harry Coleman started to change. They had first met 19 years ago, back in the days when Coleman would invite her to judge chili cook-offs. Because they lived only a mile apart, they began to carpool to political events, such as strategy sessions for the Valley secession movement.

Coleman’s biography is less well known. Having become wealthy selling medical supplies, Coleman says he retired at age 34 to travel the world and, in more recent years, devote time to community activism. Coleman, who was married once, says he lived a bachelor’s life for 26 years before realizing he wanted to spend the rest of his days with Bobbi.

There was another reason, Coleman suggests, that they understand each other so well: “We were both terminal patients.”

Seven years ago, while Bobbi Fiedler was having her first battles with lymphoma, Coleman said, he was suffering from what doctors called “end stage” cirrhosis of the liver.

“But here we are, getting a second chance in life,” Coleman said. “We’ve become about as close as people can become.

“We do have a lot to be thankful for. It’s nice to be alive.”

*

Yes, it all may seem as sweet as Verna Porter’s recipe for candied yams. Verna and Wanda took a break from their Thanksgiving duties at the church to agree that Bobbi and Harry indeed make a nice couple. And they didn’t overhear the exchange that occurred earlier when I asked whether the petition campaign to divide the school district faced a deadline for gathering signatures.

“It’s my understanding,” Fiedler said, “that there isn’t.”

“It’s my understanding,” said Coleman, “that there is.”

Why, they even disagree sweetly.

Give ‘em a few years.

*

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.