Norma Rathbun was born in a small Indiana town in 1911. In those days, the best way to travel from place to place was by railroad. Her father worked for the railroad and his job took him to railroad towns throughout the country. He was on the move so much that Norma would attend 34 different schools throughout her life, constantly uprooted and placed in new environments — but always able to make new friends. She would later write, “In my early childhood, our little family often made its home in a box car set off on a railroad siding in a lonely place.” She graduated from El Centro High School and attended Central Junior College in El Centro, California.
The last place the Rathbun family lived was on the east side of Los Angeles. Her father lost his job during the great depression and Norma had to find work. To qualify for jobs, she took a course at Woodbury Business College in Los Angeles. It was during this time that she met Sam Yocum in 1931. They were married the next year at the Alhambra Methodist Church. Around the same time, Sam opened a furniture store in Los Angeles and Norma began working for the store.
The couple lived in several different rental units in the western San Gabriel Valley until buying their first home in Alhambra in 1941. Norma had finally settled down in one place. She and Sam went on to have three children: Virginia, Martha, and Robert.
They had a Japanese-American gardener named George Koba who became a family friend. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor that December, her gardener was deeply concerned about not only his own fate, but that of his one-year-old baby girl named Georgia Ann (her Japanese name was Michiko) whose mother was in the hospital with tuberculosis. He had no one to care for the child while he was at work.
Norma volunteered to care for the infant during the day while the father continued his gardening schedule amidst the uncertainty of the fate of Japanese people on the West Coast. Norma’s decision to care for the child became national news and she received letters of both praise and condemnation. She was not deterred from supporting her friend until he and his daughter were relocated for the duration of the war.
Norma started becoming active in Alhambra affairs as early as 1939, and was a prominent volunteer in our local library and in the statewide library system. By 1955, she was well known for her service to Alhambra and was approached by a committee of prominent men who asked if she would run for a City Council seat. She agreed and got more votes than her two male opponents combined, becoming the first woman to sit on Alhambra’s City Council. She would serve on the Council for the next 16 years.
When she was first on the Council, the other four men would often excuse themselves and all go to the men’s bathroom together to talk things over. After this occurred a few times, Norma told them that she would not be excluded from their discussions and that if her fellow Council members all went to the men’s room at once, she would join them there. She won the point.
I met Norma in the Spring of 1960, when I was in the 8th Grade at Baldwin School. My father took me to a couple of City Council meetings in the old City Hall (located where The Diner was and Kue’s Chinese Kitchen and Bar is now). Dad introduced me to her, D’arcy Quinn, and Talmage Burke.
Norma served nine years on the Council before her fellow Council members chose her to be Alhambra’s first woman mayor in July of 1964. The new City Hall was a welcome addition to Alhambra and Norma convinced her fellow council members to ban smoking in the council chambers. As mayor, she surveyed her new office. She resolved to set aside time each week for Alhambra residents to come to the office and meet with her, sharing their concerns. It was one of her many firsts.
During her three terms as mayor, she appointed the first woman to a city commission, led the foundation of the Alhambra Historical Society, led the effort to fund the new Civic Center Library, produced an Agricultural Fair at City Hall which led to our weekly Certified Farmer’s Market, and was active in the campaign to build our current hospital, among other firsts.
In 1966, Norma was persuaded to run for the California Assembly in the 45th District as a Republican. Most of the District lay outside Alhambra but she lived south of Valley within the district. Her opponent enjoyed a Democratic majority of 76% of registered voters, yet it was a very tight race which she lost by just over 650 votes out of 87,000 votes cast. She ran again in 1968 but lost again.
When she retired from the City Council in 1971, she remained active in community affairs for the rest of her life. Norma died 2 days shy of her 99th birthday on January 8th, 2010. Alhambra is better off for her service to our community.
