Memorial fund established to honor groundbreaking lawmaker
Mervyn M. Dymally
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—The Mervyn M. Dymally Memorial Fund has been established to honor the life, career, and legacy of the groundbreaking lawmaker who passed away Sunday, October 7 in Los Angeles from declining health. He was 86. The memorial fund is available online at: https://www.wepay.com/donations/dymallymemorialfund.
“Please join us as we celebrate the life and legacy of Mervyn Dymally by making a donation of the Mervyn M. Dymally Memorial Fund,” said Dymally’s longtime press secretary Jasmyne Cannick and family spokesperson. “Mr. Dymally's family asks that in lieu cards, flowers, and gifts, that you consider making a donation in his name to help champion the causes and organizations that he so passionately cared about—health and education.”
During his career, Dymally worked to improve education and access to healthcare for his largely working-class, minority constituents and later after retiring from public office, lead a health institute at the Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles. The university’s nursing school bears his name.
At this time funeral arrangements are still pending.
LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Funeral arrangements were pending today for former California Lt. Gov., Congressman and Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally, who died over the weekend at the age of 86.
“My beloved husband of 44 years passed away very peacefully this morning at 6:30 a.m.,” his wife, Alice Gueno Dymally, said in a statement Sunday. “He lived a very extraordinary life and had no regrets.”
Services were held recently for Lillian Miles Lewis, wife of Rep. John Lewis, who died on New Years Eve. She was 73.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, it was after taking a job as a librarian at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University) that she met her husband at a 1967 New Year’s Eve party at the home of television personality and civil rights activist Xernona Clayton.
The two were married less than a year later and had a partnership that spanned 44 years.
LOS ANGELES, Calif.—The intersection of 27th Street and Central Avenue was dedicated today as Dr. Bassett H. Brown Square in honor of the pioneering provider of health care services for the underserved in South Los Angeles.
Brown is the CEO of the Central Neighborhood Health Foundation, which is located at the intersection. He has been associated with the clinic since 1967, when he responded to a plea for a physician's assistant.
Memorial services for former California Lt. Gov. Mervyn M. Dymally will be held Wednesday, Oct. 17 at 12:30 p.m. at Holy Cross Mortuary, 5835 West Slauson Ave., in Culver City. The service will be preceded by a viewing from 9 a.m. to 12 noon at that location.
The family requests that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Mervyn M. Dymally Memorial Fund, which has been established to honor his life, career, and legacy at https://www.wepay.com/donations/dymallymemorialfund.
"I am tremendously saddened to hear of the passing of my friend, former Congressman and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally. Representative Dymally was a true role model for generations of Californians, not least because of his barrier-breaking legacy as one of the first persons of color to serve at the state and federal levels of our great nation.
