FROM THE NEWSROOM:Gil was an honest soul

Newport-Mesa lost one its most colorful characters last week with the death of former Assemblyman Gil Ferguson.

Ferguson stood behind his convictions, regardless of the political bazookas that were sure to be aimed his way, something that can hardly be said of most politicians today.

I recall my first encounter with him back in 1990.

Ferguson had introduced a resolution in the state Assembly that called for lawmakers to dispute that Japanese Americans were detained in “concentration camps,” and he wanted the Assembly to say that the government was not wrong to send those of Japanese ancestry there in the first place.

I drew the assignment to write a story about it.

I was the new reporter around these parts and didn’t know Ferguson, but I scoured through the source lists and placed a call to the assemblyman.

Much to my surprise, he answered the phone.

I told him who I was and started asking him questions about why he wanted to pass such a resolution.

Ferguson explained his views in a calm, grandfatherly tone, telling me that people today just don’t understand what it was like in 1941. The Japanese Navy had just attacked Pearl Harbor.

The country was at war and people and the government were scared, he said. The government did what it thought was the right thing at the time, he said. He was particularly concerned that school textbooks were not reflecting the history correctly.

I’m not going to debate those particulars here or what I thought of Ferguson’s resolution at the time. That hardly matters.

But I will tell you that I didn’t really understand what Ferguson meant until Sept. 11, 2001.

That’s when my generation experienced its own Pearl Harbor and I can tell you that right after that, the community’s views of Muslims and Arab-Americans changed ever so dramatically.

There was lots of hysteria then and it was only then that I could begin to understand what point Ferguson was trying to make.

Ferguson’s resolution, of course, was a non-starter, deader than dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled California Assembly, where it was trounced on a 60-4 vote.

Even Ferguson’s longtime colleagues refused to stand behind him on that one.

Despite the vilification he faced, I instantly took a liking to him.

I saw him as an honest soul, as someone who didn’t back down from his beliefs, even when those beliefs resulted in a public flogging.

So it is fitting that one of the groups he founded along the way bore the name, Principles Over Politics.

The Japanese internment camp resolution was just one example of the many, let’s say, staunchly conservative and highly controversial stands and comments he made in his long, unwavering political career.

My condolences go out to his wife, Anita, and their four children. I know they must be filled with sorrow at his passing. But they should know that while he was a man who angered many, he was respected by many, many more.

Services for Ferguson are scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at the Newport Harbor Lutheran Church at 798 Dover Drive.