Jessie Roybal; Local Native American Leader

Jessie Roybal, a Native American leader and longtime director of a job-training center, has died at her Camarillo home. She was 62.

Roybal, who headed the Candelaria American Indian Council until 1991, was remembered by friends and relatives as a tireless advocate of Native Americans’ right to employment and equal opportunity. The cause of her death on Oct. 25 remains undetermined pending tests, but is believed by authorities to have been a heart attack.

“My mother was a great woman,” said Roybal’s daughter, Letitia Roybal of Camarillo. “She did so much for so many people. She was actually planning on starting a program for troubled youths before she died. I’m so proud of what she accomplished in her life and what she did for people.”

Born Jessie May McGhee in New York City on April 28, 1936, Roybal was the daughter of a Scottish father and a Creek Indian mother.

When she was 13, her father, Archie, died of a brain tumor, and she moved west with her mother, Letitia, to Santa Monica.

After marrying Tony Roybal in Los Angeles in the early 1950s, she moved to Camarillo a few years later and became active in Native American affairs.

Roybal was one of the founders of the Candelaria American Indian Council, a publicly funded social service agency dedicated to helping Native Americans by providing job training, job placement, food and other family services. The council eventually grew to serve nine counties, including Ventura County.

She was instrumental in efforts to preserve Chumash artifacts and history, to secure what is now the Oakbrook Chumash Center in Thousand Oaks and in persuading the state Employment Development Department to open special Native American offices in six counties, according to friends and relatives. Due to her work with Chumash leaders, Roybal was adopted into the Chumash tribe in a formal ceremony. In 1991, however, Roybal was ousted from the council in a bitter dispute.

Roybal, whose husband died in 1993, is survived by two sons, Anthony of Atlanta and Stuart of Camarillo, as well as daughter Letitia; two sisters, Rosalee Harmen Jackson of Camarillo and Letitia Blake of Belding, Mich.; a brother, Otha McGhee of Mobile, Ala.; three grandchildren, and numerous nieces and nephews.

A memorial Mass will be held at 10 a.m. Wednesday at St. Mary Magdalen Chapel in Camarillo. Arrangements are under the direction of Pierce Brothers Griffin Mortuary in Camarillo.