Former state Assemblymember Jerry Felando, a Republican who represented the Harbor Area and South Bay from 1978 to 92, has died. He was 88.
Felando was 88 years old and had been a cancer survivor. Felando, who survived cancer in the 1980s, died on Saturday, Aug. 23, at his San Pedro home following an unexpected health iissue. Felando’s former chief deputy, Rudy Svorinich Jr., also the area’s former Los Angeles City Councilmember, announced his former boss’s death this week.
“Jerry was conservative,” Svorinich said, “but he had friends on both sides of the aisle,” including former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.
Felando’s grandfather settled in San Pedro in 1906 and the former assemblymember was “very proud of his ethnic heritage, of his Dalmatian and Croatian roots,” Svorinich said.
Gerald “Jerry” Felando was born on Dec. 29, 1934, in San Pedro to Nicholas and Winifred (nee Stanovich) Felando. He attended Seventh Street Elementary School and Richard Henry Dana Junior High School before graduating from San Pedro High School in 1953. He graduated from the USC College of Dentistry after that and served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Felando was also active in the Dalmatian-American Club in San Pedro for many years, serving on the board and as the club’s volunteer general manager for most of one year.
Felando was a dentist, with a practice in Torrance, when he first ran for state office in 1978. He was part of the Proposition 13 Jarvis-Gann tax-cutting movement that year. He took on — and defeated — longtime Assemblymember Vincent Thomas, for whom the bridge spanning Los Angeles Harbor was named.
The joke after that, Svorinich said, was that Felando was the “man who defeated the bridge.”
Felando was especially proud of his legislation supporting better elder care and programs for those with developmental and mental disabilities, Svorinich said. He also was a champion for both the commercial and sports fishing industries.
A 1988…
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