JACKIE HEATHER 1928-2008: Former mayor was a ‘doer’

Jackie Heather, a former mayor of Newport Beach and a key player in the city’s politics for more than a decade, died Tuesday of natural causes. She was 80.

The city’s mayor from 1980 to 1982, Heather also served as a planning commissioner and City Councilwoman during her 15 years in public office. In 2002, after living for nearly half a century in Newport Beach, she relocated to Arizona to spend time with family members.

During her time in office, Heather supported a number of building projects in the still-expanding city, pushed for silt removal of Upper Newport Bay and helped craft the 1985 settlement agreement that limited flight activity at John Wayne Airport — whose planes flew directly over her family’s house.

The Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce named Heather its Citizen of the Year for 1986.

“One of her favorite quotes was ‘Either lead, follow or get the hell out of the way,’” said her son John Heather. “That was the mantra she lived by.”

Heather, the wife of a cardiologist, moved to Southern California in the 1950s and settled in Newport Beach in 1957.

She took her first political office in 1971 when she accepted an appointment to the Planning Commission, for which she served as chairwoman from 1976 to 1978. From there, she moved on to the City Council, where she served for eight years.

A close friend and political ally of former Mayor Evelyn Hart and former Assemblywoman and State Sen. Marian Bergeson, Heather won a reputation as a hard-nosed fighter who sometimes resorted to inspired means to gain support for her causes.

In the late 1970s, when she and Bergeson spearheaded a successful drive to remove silt from the bay, the pair raised awareness by selling buckets of the silt for $5, Bergeson said.

Heather showed her toughness in another way in the 1980s, when she sought — and won — reelection after a stroke and other health problems.

Upon stepping down from the City Council in 1986, she endorsed Clarence Turner, who would go on to become Newport Beach’s mayor, for her seat.

“Jackie was a doer,” Bergeson said. “She was there to get a job done.”

In addition to protecting the environment, Heather often supported development in Newport Beach.

As a councilwoman, she backed the Promontory Point housing project on the bluffs and approved the hotels that later became the Island Hotel and the Fairmont Newport Beach.

“She was a friend of business,” said Richard Luehrs, the president of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce.

One of Hart’s favorite memories of Heather was in 1981, when the mayor oversaw the construction of a new bridge over Newport Bay. To celebrate the bridge’s opening, Heather invited a band and hosted a dance on the bridge with hundreds of people in attendance.

“You didn’t just have a regular ribbon-cutting with her,” Hart said.

When Heather departed Newport Beach in 2002, she threw a going-away party at her home with Bergeson, Hart and other friends in attendance. John Heather said when he first heard of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who has five children and a new baby, the Alaska governor reminded him of his multitasking mother.

“She was the ultimate juggler,” he said. “She had all of us lined up and organized about where we were going to go.”

Heather is survived by her four sons and five grandchildren. John Heather said memorial services were planned for later this month at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, but a date has not been set.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.