She was ‘ahead of her time’

Friends, family and former colleagues paid tribute Tuesday to Harriett M. Wieder, the first woman in Orange County to hold the office of County Supervisor and a founder of the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, who died Monday at age 89.

Wieder, a Newport Beach resident and former mayor of Huntington Beach, died of heart failure at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, according to Ed Laird, her longtime friend and Conservancy colleague.

“Many of you knew Harriett was a woman who would easily share her convictions in the most demonstrative ways,” her daughter, Gayle Tauber, and son, Leland Wieder, said in a statement. “She was a woman who made things happen. ‘You don’t just talk about things, you do them.’ And our mother did make things happen. She was a vital, passionate force of nature.”

Wieder was a devoted environmentalist, Laird said.

“She had a great mission in life to leave the world a better place than she found it, and the Bolsa Chica Conservancy was one of her passions,” he said. “She enjoyed it a great deal, and she worked very hard on it to make it what it is today.”

He added that Wieder, who served on national political boards in addition to local ones, always seemed busy with one project or another.

“She could have a simple conversation with a very ordinary person, and the next minute, she could be in a very sophisticated and complicated issue regarding the environment or governing,” Laird said. “She fit in almost everywhere.”

Wieder was elected to the Huntington Beach City Council in 1974, and chosen by her peers for a one-year term as mayor in 1976.

She served one term on the council before moving on to the Board of Supervisors, where she served from 1978 to 1995.

State Assemblyman Jim Silva, who was mayor of Huntington Beach when Wieder was a supervisor, said she always believed there should be a safety net for social programs.

Wieder was a leader for many young women, he said.

“She was a woman that was ahead of her time,” he said.

Wieder stayed in politics after her years as a supervisor. President Bill Clinton appointed her in 1995 to the governing body of the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States and in 1996 to the Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade & Investment Policy, which advised the president on how to increase U.S. trade opportunities in Asian countries.