Wendell Miller; Helped Recall Mayor Frank Shaw

Wendell L. Miller, Methodist minister and political crusader who helped oust corrupt Los Angeles Mayor Frank Shaw in 1938, elect reform Mayor Fletcher Bowron and restore trust in city government, has died at the age of 97.

Miller died Tuesday at Pilgrim Place retirement facility in Claremont, according to his son-in-law, Don Iverson.

Perhaps unusually for a clergyman, Miller staunchly believed that the church should be heavily involved in the social and political agenda of its community.

“Christ,” he noted in a 1949 sermon at University Methodist Church at USC, “was a divine agitator, the great intruder.”

Miller was the founding president of the Citizens Independent Vice Investigating Committee, or CIVIC, which was a major force in Shaw’s recall and Bowron’s election.

Addressing a church women’s group concerned with corrupt police and government practices in 1937, Miller said: “The vice dens are making people abnormal faster than the police can pick them up, even if they wanted to arrest them.

“I know where the gambling dens and the houses of ill repute are to be found,” he said, “but the police don’t seem to be able to find them. . . . I have before me here 15 typed pages of addresses of gambling halls and these houses, which already I have furnished to the police.

“The decent people of Los Angeles must get together,” he said, “and force the agencies of the law to carry out the intent of the law.”

After Bowron’s election, the minister continued his cleanup campaign. When another clergyman supported City Council candidates opposed by Bowron, Miller blasted him for promoting politicians “identified with the Police Commission who played hand and glove with Shaw.”

During World War II, Miller criticized another city councilman as unfit for the judicial office he sought because he had advocated favoring returning servicemen over conscientious objectors for city jobs.

Born in Albion, Neb., Miller moved to Los Angeles to study psychology and theology at USC, where he received bachelor’s, master’s and honorary doctor of divinity degrees. He was minister for the Harbor City and Florence Avenue Methodist churches and the Manhattan Beach Community Church, where he was named South Bay Humanitarian of the Year.

Miller was in the pulpit of the downtown University Methodist Church from 1936 until his retirement in 1954.

Widowed in August by the death of Thelma, his wife of 72 years, Miller is survived by two daughters, Marlene Iverson of Rancho Palos Verdes, and Sharon Gobel of Kingwood, Texas; four granddaughters, and four great-grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 4, at Claremont United Methodist Church, 211 W. Foothill Blvd., Claremont.

The family has asked that memorial donations be made to Pilgrim Place, 660 Avery Road, Claremont, CA 91711-2499.