Jane McCormick Tolmach

Jane McCormick Tolmach

Oxnard, CA

Jane McCormick Tolmach, longtime Ventura County resident, community activist and political leader died at age 93 at her Oxnard home Sunday August 23 surrounded by her family.

She arrived in the county in 1923 as a 2-year-old when her mother and father, Vern Tracy and Robert Francis (B.F.) McCormick brought their young family from the snows of Havre, Montana on a winter vacation to the beaches and citrus groves of the coast, and decided to stay, settling in Santa Paula. B.F. was a talented retailer and created a string of successes including the New York Store and the Ventura Department Store. The family moved to a new Main Street home and all four children (Robert, John, Eve Duff, and Jane) graduated from Ventura High School.

Jane, youngest of the four, became an avid swimmer and tennis player, and pursued interests in geography and social studies, encouraged by her older brother Robert's 1930s travel and study in Europe. She was sensitized to planning issues by the devastating 1928 Saint Francis Dam collapse and Santa Clara River flood, which the family only narrowly avoided, and was motivated by the spiraling poverty and homelessness of the Depression to seek out social work as a vocation.

After a bachelor's degree from UCLA in 1943, she followed her sister Eve to Smith College, where she received a master's degree in Social Work in 1945. Following work with the Red Cross in impoverished Baltimore neighborhoods, she was assigned as a social worker at Corona Naval Hospital in 1946, where she met her future husband, Dr. Daniel Tolmach, on a tennis court.

Dan had just returned from a harrowing assignment on a US Navy destroyer which supported Marine troops in the Guam and Saipan battles. On shore, he participated in field triage and evacuation of wounded troops. Onboard, he was part of emergency operations teams. The experience marked him and turned him into a lifelong pacifist. After a wedding at Mission San Buenaventura, and one winter in New York State, the family settled in Oxnard in 1948, where he became the city's first specialist in pediatrics.

Jane had five children (James, Richard, Eve, Adam, and Jonathan) from 1947 to 1958 but never let homemaking tasks stop her from working on important causes. She became active in the 1956 Presidential campaign and helped local organization for the 1958 Democratic sweep of state electoral offices. Her Douglas Avenue home during political seasons typically had 10 to 15 kids and adults working on labeling, sorting political mail and processing precinct lists.

She formed close friendships with Governor Edmund G. Brown and Senator Alan Cranston in the 1958 campaign, leading her to be a Delegate to the 1960 National Democratic Convention. Although she worked hard to get Democrats into office, she was openly critical of the Vietnam War, much earlier than party leaders. This led her to a new role, as a reformer and voice of conscience. She became active in human rights movements, including Cesar Chavez's effort to organize farm labor.

She remained friendly with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but was elated when Senator Robert Kennedy joined the Presidential race in 1968 and sought the Hispanic vote, campaigning with Chavez through agricultural areas. She worked tirelessly to raise money and get endorsements for him, and was onstage with him and Chavez at several events just before the election. Kennedy's assassination the night of his California victory was very traumatic for her, and led her to question whether progress was even possible at the Federal level.

Local causes attracted her more from this time onward, and she campaigned successfully for a seat on the Oxnard City Council in 1970, serving as mayor in 1973 and 1974. Oxnard had, in the early 70's, troubled relations between police and minority neighborhoods, and she worked as a liaison between the Police Department and black and Hispanic leaders to lower tensions and try to make policing more community-based. Her eldest son Jim concurrently joined the U.S. Justice Department and worked in the Civil Rights Division enforcing the Voting Rights Act in the South.

She also became concerned, following the devastating 1972 Santa Barbara Channel oil spill, about energy projects like the proposed Oxnard liquefied natural gas port, that carried the threat of turning Oxnard from an agricultural paradise into an industrial wasteland. She put together a coalition of tourism interests and environmental experts to publicize the risks of tanker leaks and plume explosions and to pose better development alternatives. She tirelessly lobbied against siting the LNG port in Oxnard, in a decade-long effort that was eventually successful.

In 1976, Jane won the Democratic nomination for Assembly District 36, but found herself facing a gas industry-backed candidate, Charles Imbrecht in the general election. Her environment-oriented politics offended the Assembly leadership of the era, and her campaign was denied promised funds at the last minute, leading to a close defeat. However new friends met during the campaign gave her other chances to be effective in Sacramento. She served on the state Water Reclamation Board, and later the state Community Colleges Board, as well as numerous local boards and commissions.

After she finished her term on the Oxnard City Council in 1978, Jane went back to college and completed a law degree from Southwestern University in 1981. Travel in Spain, France, and Italy led to a family interest in winemaking, and her son Adam launched two wineries including the Ojai Vineyard with Jane's help.

Jane continued to be active in politics, particularly when she saw a threat to her community. Then she would spring into action, quickly analyzing the fight and finding effective allies, sometimes surprising ones.

Even in her 80's, when gambling industry interests tried to launch an Oxnard casino, she pulled together an alliance of minority leaders and fundamentalist ministers, and marched arm-in-arm into a City Council meeting to protest the proposed zoning change, effectively ending city consideration of the plan. Jane's spirited and innovative solutions and her populist and egalitarian sympathies will be missed in a political landscape that has become increasingly combative and exclusionary.

She was predeceased by her beloved husband Dan, her brothers John and Robert McCormick and her sister Eve Duff. She is survived by her family, who miss her greatly: Jim Tolmach and Sally Ferguson of Atlanta, and granddaughters Elizabeth Tolmach and Rebecca Tolmach and spouse Evan Fackler; Richard Tolmach and Ann Dennis of Ille-sur-Tet, France, and their daughter Emily Cree; Eve Tolmach of Oakland; Adam Tolmach and Helen Hardenbergh of Oak View, and grandsons Ben Tolmach and Henry Tolmach; and Jonathan and Lucy Tolmach of Oak View.

A memorial Mass will be offered for Jane at Santa Clara Catholic Church on October 2 at 10:00 AM. In lieu of flowers, please consider giving to the political campaign of your choice.