By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief
The latest meeting of the Pacific Palisades Historical Society turned into an impromptu celebration of the life of former president Lorraine Oshins who died on Monday, June 13.
Oshins was a powerful force both in the society and the community: A Southern Belle and World War II codebreaker who became a high-profile anti-war protestor.
She was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1923, the oldest of four children, but a peripatetic childhood brought her to Los Angeles.
“When she graduated from Huntingdon she joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service in the U.S. Naval Reserve),” recalled her colleague, Shirley Haggstrom, who was visibly upset as she shared the news of her friend’s passing at the Historical Society meeting last Thursday.
“Because of her linguistic ability in French, Spanish and German, she became a cryptographer, decoding enemy messages that were interpreted by the Allies during the war.
After the war, she attended graduate school at UCLA and pursued a 40-year career as a high school language teacher at Hamilton High while raising two children. She moved to the Palisades in 1955 and never left.
“Lorraine may have been born and raised in the South, but she was no shrinking violet. Many of you probably know that she had strong opinions and was not shy about voicing them,” recalled Haggstrom ruefully.
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Oshins became a leading member of Palisadians for Peace.
She would wear a sign reading “Recruit for College Not War” and hand out flyers at Huntington High School to remind students they could prevent their names being handed over to military recruiters.
At the time she aroused some animosity but that faded as the war became less popular: she felt she may have saved some lives by preventing young people signing up and had no regrets about her protests. A memorial service will be scheduled for later in the summer.
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