Editor’s word: Title IX — the landmark laws that prohibits intercourse discrimination in instructional establishments that obtain federal funding — was signed into legislation on June 23, 1972. In recognition of this anniversary, we’ll be profiling Trojan trailblazers all year long.

A model of this story initially printed on Dec. 2, 2022.

To some who knew her, Rosalind “Roz” Wiener Wyman was forward of her time. To others, she was a stalwart, a go-getter and even an icon.

She was completely a trailblazer. In the Fifties, only a yr out of USC, she grew to become the youngest individual and solely the second lady elected to the Los Angeles City Council — years earlier than the ladies’s motion of the Sixties or the enactment of  landmark Title IX laws banned intercourse discrimination in instructional establishments that obtain federal funding. She laid the groundwork for the ladies who adopted her.

But maybe most significantly, to her son Bob Wyman, she was merely “Mom.”

“Looking back, I was probably in college when I realized how different my experience was and the extent of what Mom did,” Wyman mentioned. “As I got older, I had a broader perspective from outside the house that this was a remarkable woman.”

The USC alumna spearheaded the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles throughout a time when few main skilled sports activities groups performed on the West Coast and introduced a wave of different skilled sports activities groups west.

But her contributions to sports activities solely inform a fraction of her story. A devoted public servant, she served on the City Council for greater than a decade earlier than turning into an influential voice within the Democratic Party, serving as chair and chief government officer of the 1984 Democratic National Convention.

In a public assertion issued after Wyman handed away in October 2022, then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi known as Wyman “a godmother of the Democratic Party” who “nurtured young people, mentored candidates and helped elect dozens of women to office.”

One of these girls is former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, who served California’s thirty sixth congressional district from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011.

Iconic is such an important phrase for Roz, iconic to the town and iconic to girls.

Jane Harman, USC Price scholar-in-residence

“Iconic is such a great word for Roz, iconic to the city and iconic to women,” mentioned Harman, Presidential Scholar-in-Residence at the USC Price School of Public Policy and an honorary USC trustee.

“Back in the day, it’s hard to imagine how a woman could have done what she did. I can’t imagine another woman that I know, including the most powerful, that at age 22 could have done what she did.”

Roz Wyman: Early life, path to USC and political profession

A local Angeleno, Wyman attended Los Angeles High School, the place she was a pupil authorities chief. She grew to become well-known by the vice principal for frequently presenting “crazy ideas,” like bringing lonely college students collectively for lunch mixers and internet hosting faculty dances for many who couldn’t afford nation membership gatherings.

After highschool, Wyman majored in public administration at what was then known as the USC School of Citizenship and Public Administration, graduating in 1952. A yr later, she was elected to the L.A. City Council at solely 22 years outdated, making her the youngest elected legislator in a significant U.S. metropolis.

While working for workplace as a pupil at USC, Wyman recruited quite a few pupil volunteers and used her personal front room as her marketing campaign headquarters. That early expertise would put together her for not solely her function on the City Council, but in addition when she served as performing mayor of L.A. She then led a marketing campaign to create extra parks within the metropolis and have become the primary lady to run a nationwide political conference.

Roz was a pressure of nature.

Nancy Pelosi, former U.S. House speaker

“Roz was a force of nature: breaking down barriers for women in California politics, while forging new ways to bring people together through politics, the arts, and baseball,” Pelosi said. “Her leadership helped draw her beloved Dodgers to Los Angeles — and my Giants to San Francisco — so that California families could experience the thrill of America’s pastime.”

According to Wyman’s son Bob, that love for baseball was engrained in his mom from the second she was born. The story goes that his grandmother, initially from Chicago, requested the physician one query when Roz was born: “What’s the Cubs score?”

“I assume that’s where my mother’s love of baseball was inherited,” he chuckled.

Bringing professional sports activities to L.A.

One of her largest marketing campaign guarantees when she first ran for workplace was to convey main league sports activities to L.A., throughout a time when the West Coast was nonetheless an untapped market.

“She always felt that major cities needed major sports,” her son mentioned.

She contacted then-Brooklyn Dodgers proprietor Walter O’Malley, who initially refused to talk with a younger metropolis council member from throughout the nation.

“I didn’t quit,” Wyman told USC News in 2018.

Ultimately, Wyman was in a position to persuade O’Malley to go to L.A., the place throughout a helicopter tour of the town the latter noticed the right web site for a baseball stadium. O’Malley moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn, and the group performed its first sport in L.A. on April 18, 1958. A yr later, development started on the brand new stadium — not with out controversy from the encompassing neighborhood — and in 1962 Dodger Stadium opened to followers.

O’Malley and Wyman remained lifelong mates, and when the previous died in 1979, his household — at his request — gifted Wyman a key that matches into each door at Dodger Stadium.

“Tommy Lasorda would yell at Mom from the dugout,” Bob Wyman mentioned. “That’s a pretty cool experience for a young kid.”

Her efforts additionally had a ripple impact that noticed the New York Giants transfer to San Francisco in 1958. Two years later, L.A. obtained one other professional franchise when the Lakers moved to city from Minneapolis, one other mission Wyman had a hand in.

Remembering L.A. icon Roz Wyman

In addition to Pelosi, different well-known political figures and celebrities paid their respects to Wyman on social media after her dying.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein known as Wyman a buddy and “someone who made a real difference for Los Angeles and for Democratic politics.”

“Roz was a real force of nature whenever she set her mind to something,” Feinstein said. “Whether it was politics or dragging a baseball team 3,000 miles across the country, Roz had a passion that was infectious, and she really got things done.”

Tennis legend and activist Billie Jean King took to Twitter to pay respect to a buddy and supply of inspiration.

“One of my Sheroes has passed away,” King mentioned in a tweet.

“Roz Wyman was the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council, at age 22, in 1953 and the reason we have the @Dodgers in LA. May she Rest in Power. Thank you, Roz.”

Harman hopes that Wyman’s impression can proceed into the subsequent era of ladies in politics, and that Los Angeles remembers the icon it misplaced.

“She was my role model in politics,” Harman mentioned. “She was just the North Star, not just to me, but to so many people.”

More tales about: Alumni, Diversity Equity and Inclusion, Title IX