Howard Wayne — the unabashed liberal who spent most of his life in public service, who overcame a speech impediment in his youth to win a seat in the California Assembly and who once celebrated a landmark legislative victory by sharing a candy bar with his bride — has died. He was 75.
Wayne was born in Fresno, but his family migrated south to San Diego when he was a toddler. He never left his adopted hometown.
His condition quickly deteriorated following a recent illness, and he passed away Nov. 2. It was his 75th birthday.
Mary Lundberg, Wayne’s wife of 35 years, said the three-term lawmaker had begun feeling ill last month and made his way to a doctor only after making sure she had made it to a previously scheduled surgery he did not want postponed.
He was admitted to Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla in mid-October but slipped into a coma and never recovered.
“Howard was never sick. He was a very healthy person,” Lundberg said. “The only thing I can remember is a couple of minor operations. It was a total shock to me, and it was a total shock to his friends, too.”
The son of a North Park shopkeeper, Wayne was a good student and an avid reader. He graduated early from Hoover High School and enrolled at San Diego State University at the age of 15.
He joined the College Democrats and was quickly named club president. He fostered a robust interest in Aztecs football, baseball and basketball and earned a political science degree before enrolling in the University of San Diego School of Law.
At USD, Wayne served as editor of the law review. He also found a core group of friends that lasted throughout his life.
“Howard and I met on or about Sept. 1, 1969, which was the first day of law school,” said James Spievak, who now works as an attorney in private practice.
“They divided the class by alphabet into three sections, and we were the R to Zs,” Spievak said of that first day. “He was in the row behind me, and we just got engaged in conversations as time passed.”
The two were part of a group of study partners who grew close at school and then prepared for the bar exam as a team. Upon graduation, they formed what they called the Tuesday Club — gathering for roving monthly lunches where they kept up on politics, community doing and each other.
“Howard was the glue, he was the conscience,” Spievak said. “He was the one who said ‘OK, get out your calendars, we need to nail down our schedules.’”
Howard Wayne, pictured with his wife, Mary Lundberg, in 2010, died this month. He was 75.
(John Gastaldo / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Wayne joined the California Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general in 1973. He spent much of his career at the Attorney General’s Office prosecuting businesses in consumer-fraud cases.
Wayne struggled with a stutter as a young lawyer but joined the educational group Toastmasters International to help improve his speech, Spievak said.
“He overcame it by hard work,” he said.
The deputy prosecutor met his wife at a meeting of the Kensington College Democratic Club, where Lundberg had agreed to collect dues at the door. Wayne noticed her right away and did what he could to impress the woman.
“We ended up talking for hours at a coffee house that same night,” Lundberg remembered.
Lundberg was soon accepted to the UC Davis law school, but that didn’t stop Wayne from traveling to see her as often as he could get away.
“He was very persistent,” she said.
The couple married in 1988 at a ceremony in the Alcazar Garden section of Balboa Park, just south of the Old Globe Theater. The couple honeymooned in Big Bear.
All the while, Wayne cultivated his interest in politics.
He ran for state Assembly in 1990 but lost. In 1996, he ran for the 78th District state Assembly seat vacated by Dede Alpert. He bested former state Assemblymember Trisha Hunter by 4 percentage points and was reelected twice.
Pat Libby remembers Wayne knocking on her front door in Kensington in the early 2000s and introducing himself as her representative in the statehouse.
“It was a really hot day, so I invited him in for an iced tea,” said Libby, who at the time was developing a graduate program for nonprofit professionals at USD. “He came in for about 20 minutes, and we sat at my kitchen table and talked about issues I cared about.”
The two became fast friends. When Libby needed an elected official to co-teach a course in lobbying and advocacy, she turned to Wayne.
“He used to call us ‘Mr. Inside’ and ‘Ms. Outside,’” Libby said. “He would provide students with the insider knowledge of how to navigate the Assembly, and I would provide the outside knowledge about how to advocate for a campaign.”
Wayne told students that one of his proudest accomplishments in the legislature was seeing one of his first bills signed into law. That landmark legislation created a coastal water-quality testing program designed to alert surfers and others about potential contaminants.
Former Assemblymember Howard Wayne’s license plate commemorated his landmark legislation to create a statewide beach water-quality testing program — Assembly Bill 411.
(John Gibbins/San Diego Union-Tribune)
He and Lundberg were on vacation in Vermont when he heard the news. It was late, and the only place open to get something celebratory was a hotel vending machine. He bought a candy bar, sliced it in two and shared it with his wife.
Wayne taught the graduate course for many years, but he never lost the politics bug.
He ran for San Diego City Council in 2010 but lost to Lorie Zapf by 5 percentage points, some 2,000 votes. He also was selected to the San Diego County Grand Jury this year and was spending up to 40 hours a week on government-oversight work up until his illness.
A public celebration of Wayne’s life will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday at Elijah’s Restaurant, 7061 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. in San Diego.
Wayne is survived by his wife, Mary Lundberg of Clairemont; his brother, Robert Wayne of Seattle, Wash.; and an extended family of siblings-in-law and numerous nieces and nephews.
