At its last meeting before July 4, the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club fittingly celebrated local supporter of the art museum, gardening, and public education, Dee Perry, as 2022 Woman of the Year. I was honored to speak at the ceremony about her leadership as an accomplished former educator in our schools for over 30 years, and as an enduring minority voice on the School Board advocating openness and fairness in public school governance.
Most remarkably, when many believe she was treated unfairly herself by the School Board majority and openly hostile senior staff acting for the Board, Perry never responded disdainfully toward school administrators or fellow board members.
I recalled an opening night backstage dialogue I had by invitation of LBHS drama teacher Mark Dressler with the cast of an LBHS production of Henry Miller’s play “The Crucible.” To encourage the impressively talented student actors, I reminded them that when elected leaders, government officials entrusted with public interest, and even judges, do not uphold justice, sometimes we must turn to the painters, poets, song writers, and playwrights to tell the truth.
That is what great American playwright Miller did making Puritan era “witch trials” a metaphor for the denial of justice to those targeted by zealots in Congress during misdirected anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s. That was the only justice the falsely accused ever got.
Dee Perry seemingly was denied the fairness she sought for teachers, parents and students, and was targeted by retaliatory tactics we often see at the local, state and federal level, when secrecy powers strictly limited by law are misapplied expansively to shield controversial topics and actions from public disclosure. Closed door meetings too often are called unlawfully as an anti-democratic tactic to silence dissent by minority voices, like that of Dee Perry.
This is part of civic decline that is dividing America into extremism at every level of our political culture, eroding trust in government itself. Whether one agrees with Dee Perry’s positioning on any specific issue, her refusal to retaliate in anger against those who retaliated in anger against her was why the only place she got a measure of civility, fairness, and justice was our Woman’s Club.
That says a lot about the good character and civic values of Perry and the Woman’s Club of Laguna Beach.
Howard Hills, Laguna Beach
My dad’s name was Henry. I suppose both novelist Henry Miller and my favorite modern playwright Arthur Miller might regard my confusion of the first names of these two great literary figures a bit Freudian, but neither of them would be so mundane as to say so. Each no doubt would find a literary allusion to make the point.