San Clemente resident, Isobel Pelham, passed away Saturday, Nov. 10, 2012, at the age of 75. She is survived by her three children, Melissa, Peter, and Sam Pelham, their spouses (respectively, Jeff Juneau, Maureen Pelham, and Allise Pelham), 5 grandchildren (Warren, Graham, Samuel, Cameron, and Malcom), older brother, Ben Williams, twin brother, Rod Williams, and their many children and grandchildren.
Since Isobel arrived on La Paloma in 2006, our neighborhood became a close-knit family, an extended pack of Pelhams, watching over each other, sharing meals and family gatherings, tilling gardens, nurturing butterflies, cuddling canines, and volunteering for the good of our community. She was so engaged with San Clemente that it seems as though she's been here forever, like Ole Hanson appointed her the Spanish Village Ambassador. She accomplished a lot in 6 years' time.
Isobel's first San Clemente volunteer position was walking canines at the animal shelter. Whatever joy those wagging tails gave her, she reciprocated, and brought plenty home to La Paloma. She thought quite a bit about getting a dog of her own, but decided that she already had an unlimited supply. Between her children's dogs, Gilly, Rusty, Trixie, Maxwell, Blue the Bouvier, Blue the Terrier, and my Foxy right down the street, there were plenty of slurpy kisses to share. Like Isobel's human family, her canines loved each other as she loved them. Auntie Isobel's house was their house because she welcomed all.
In 2008, she was appointed to the San Clemente Human Affairs Committee and the San Clemente Collaborative, on which she served 2 terms. Volunteering as a community liaison to improve the lives of residents in the Las Palmas Elementary / Max Berg Park neighborhoods, she tutored students with homework and helped those with language barriers engage with the community at large. She touched lives young, old, and in between.
One of her favorite, lifelong activities was gardening, which she continued as a member of the San Clemente Garden Club. But true to form, Isobel tended other people's gardens before her own. She nurtured community flowerbeds city-wide and volunteered her time at Concordia's Butterfly Garden, where three of her grandchildren attended school.
The annual monarch migration captivated her. She regularly rescued their chrysalises so she could teach friends, family, and kids about the butterflies' metamorphosis from grub to grandeur. Isobel thought the butterfly was the perfect metaphor for young people. They, too, will mature, spread their wings, and become beautiful in their own way, she believed.
Helping young people was the focus of Isobel's adult life. Her late husband, Peter Pelham, became the President of Washington D.C.'s Mount Vernon College for Women at the age of 31 and held that position from 1962 until 1977. He guided the college from a 2-year seminary for young women to one that became a prestigious, fully-accredited 4-year institution that prepared students for global leadership positions.
Mount Vernon College merged with George Washington University in 1999, but the Pelham name is forever recognized on campus. Two years ago, the new residence hall on the old College campus was dedicated as Pelham Hall with Pelham Commons as the center of student life.
As the 25-year old wife of the College President, Isobel was thrust into the position of nurturing young women from around the world while raising a family of her own in the 1960's and 70's. Many of those students were children of either foreign ambassadors stationed in D.C. or members of the U.S. Foreign Service. The Pelhams provided an international way-station where young people from every continent and culture were assimilated with their American family.
Isobel maintained those contacts her entire life. Despite her illness, this past summer she provided a home to Peter Rogers, a young law student from Sweden, whose mother had lived with the Pelham family decades earlier. Isobel provided him with a San Clemente home and a family to call his own as he volunteered for a Legal Aid non-profit in Santa Ana. Isobel's grandchildren became fast friends with Peter, and fondly recall the Summer of 2012 as the Summer of Peter the Swede. Peter told me this summer that his Mom loved Isobel as she did her own Mom, so he, in turn, revered her as his own grandmother. Isobel wouldn't have it any other way.
Giving and reaching out to others was in her DNA. Following their leadership positions at Mount Vernon, Isobel and Peter formed an international educational non-profit called Global Connections, which endures today. Its mission remains constant: focusing the transformative capacity of education to develop future community leaders who collaborate with others by finding common ground in an increasingly diverse world.
Isobel carried that mission to San Clemente, putting it to work as a member of the Human Affairs Committee, as a tutor with the Boys' & Girls' Club, and as a member of the League of Women Voters, where she volunteered to register new voters, educate them on key issues, and assist with candidate forums for the benefit of local residents.
Of all of her civic activities, Isobel believed voting was the most patriotic thing she--and everyone else--could do. As her health began to decline in recent weeks, she worried she wouldn't be able to make it to the polling place for this 2012 election. So, I ordered her a vote-by-mail ballot online. I checked in on her at her home the morning after the election. She was in significant discomfort, but when she saw me enter, her eyes lit up and she smiled as broadly as a cheshire cat. "Obama won," she said, "and I voted." Then she told me she loved me. I hugged her and told her, "I love you, too."
Several days after her passing, I asked Isobel's daughter-in-law, Allise, if Isobel cast a vote for those eleven propositions on our California ballot. I assumed evaluating them would be too difficult, considering her delicate state. But I assumed wrong. Allise said she considered and voted on every one of them and all the political office positions, too. Casting her presidential ballot was her last gift to our community and country.
Isobel transformed us from residents of a densely populated place where almost no one knew any one's name to a village where smiles and kindness connect us all. Like the butterflies she so admired, Isobel spread happiness and gratitude from coast to coast. She will be forever missed but never forgotten.
Thank you, Isobel, for sharing yourself and your family with all of us in the Spanish Village by the Sea.
The Pelham family will likely hold a celebration of Isobel's life early next year, to give people a chance to get through the holidays and plan a visit to San Clemente. They also request that, in lieu of flowers, people volunteer their time for their community or donate to the Boys and Girls Club.
