Lorraine Person, lifelong educator and elder abuse advocate, dies

Lorraine Person learned the value of hard work growing up on a farm in Madera.

Her family was poor; she made her own dresses out of leftover flour sacks. She took an avid interest in education, first by pushing herself through college by age 19 and then through tireless efforts to teach others as a teacher and elder rights advocate in the central San Joaquin Valley for more than 70 years.

Mrs. Person died of natural causes Tuesday in hospice care in Fresno. She was 92 years old.

“Mom loved education,” said her daughter, Pam Johnson. “She knew she wanted to be a teacher at 3 years old, and her father said he’d mortgage his overalls to pay for her education.”

Mrs. Person was born on April 26, 1923, in Kerman. Her father, Pete Andrew, immigrated to the U.S. from Greece at age 14 and worked as a farmer. Her mother, Agnes Andrew, was the daughter of a wealthy family that owned land just south of Millerton Lake.

The family soon moved to Madera, where Mrs. Person went to school.

Johnson said her mother was incredibly bright. In those days, several grade levels of children would be taught in the same classroom, she said, and her mother skipped two grades by overhearing the lessons meant for the older students and finishing them in addition to her own classwork.

Mrs. Person graduated from Madera High School at 16 before completing her teaching degree at Fresno State at 19. She began teaching seventh grade in Wasco in Kern County while still a teenager.

One of her first students was Ruben Barrios, who went on to become a teacher and principal in the Fresno Unified School District for 25 years. Barrios, now 80, said she was a wonderful teacher and a loyal friend to him for more than 60 years.

“She was very involved in helping anyone she could in Fresno: schools, the elderly and the homeless,” Barrios said. “And she had a great sense of humor and was very direct. She knew how to challenge authority in a very positive way.”

Mrs. Person continued to farm throughout her career as a teacher, having married farmer Merle Person and settled on a small plot near Fresno State.

Mrs. Person retired from teaching after a 37-year career, but her workload only intensified. She continued to write a districtwide newsletter for Fresno Unified School District for three years and advised student teachers at Fresno State for eight years after that.

She also volunteered as a docent for six years at the San Joaquin River Parkway, where her mother’s family had owned property.

It was during this post-retirement work, Johnson said, that Mrs. Person found a new calling.

“Elder abuse was coming to the forefront,” she said. “And mom found a new group she could teach.”

Mrs. Person began working with the Fresno-Madera Area Agency on Aging in 1997. The following year she helped create the Fresno County T.R.I.A.D., a partnership between law enforcement and community advocates bent on preventing elder abuse and promoting senior issues in the Valley.

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims first met Mrs. Person during the mid-1990s and worked with her for nearly two decades to create new policies and programs designed to curb local senior abuse.

“Lorraine was a true advocate for crime prevention in this county, especially crimes against the elderly,” Mims said. “She had a lot of energy up to the very end. If you were going to work with Lorraine, you knew you were going to work very hard.”

“I had trouble keeping up with her,” Mims added.

Mrs. Person received several awards for community service from Fresno County law enforcement agencies. In 2003, the Fresno-Madera Area Agency on Aging created the annual Lorraine Person Advocacy Award to honor those who help the senior community.

It was teaching, however, that drove Mrs. Person until the day she died, Johnson said.

“When she went into hospice care, mom started every morning by saying, ‘Thank you, God, it’s going to be a good day.’ She would look for anything – a beautiful leaf or a sunset – during the day that she could thank God for that night.”

“One of her nurses said she’d never seen a patient do that before,” Johnson said. “The nurse told me that she had started doing that, too: looking for something to thank God for each day.”

This story was originally published September 5, 2015 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Lorraine Person, lifelong educator and elder abuse advocate, dies."