Jean Forbath, a Costa Mesa volunteer who advocated for the poor and marginalized, founding the Share Our Selves and Save Our Youth nonprofits that today still serve thousands, died Sunday, April 20. She was 95.
Forbath died at her Costa Mesa home of natural causes, her daughter Mary Cappellini said.
Along with her late husband Frank, Forbath founded Share Our Selves out of a small room at St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Costa Mesa. Together they began responding to the needs of the community by providing food, clothes, emergency money and health care. The effort grew to serve more than 20,000 people a year during her time leading the organization.
Jean Forbath, a Costa Mesa volunteer who advocated for the poor and marginalized, founding the Share Our Selves and Save Our Youth nonprofits that today still serve thousands, died Sunday, April 20. (Courtesy of Mary Cappellini) Jean Forbath (right), a Costa Mesa volunteer who advocated for the poor and marginalized, died Sunday, April 20. Her Husband Frank Forbath (left) died in 2015. (Courtesy of Mary Cappellini) Jean Forbath, a Costa Mesa volunteer who advocated for the poor and marginalized, died Sunday, April 20. (Courtesy of Mary Cappellini) Show Caption1 of 3Jean Forbath, a Costa Mesa volunteer who advocated for the poor and marginalized, founding the Share Our Selves and Save Our Youth nonprofits that today still serve thousands, died Sunday, April 20. (Courtesy of Mary Cappellini) Expand“Jean was a very compassionate and caring woman,” said Rusty Kennedy, who worked with Forbath through the OC Human Relations Commission. “She was a fierce voice for doing the right thing, and she would not compromise that.”
Forbath was deeply involved in advocating for the poor in Orange County. In a previous video interview, she recalled the organization becoming inundated with people coming to it with needs from basics, such as food and clothing, to health care.
“After a year or two, we were helping about 20,000 people a month,” Forbath said, “which was astounding in Orange County where we’re not supposed to have any poverty.”
Forbath, for her life’s work, received several honors, including the Mayor’s Award in 2017, the OC Human Relations Commission’s Legacy Award and recognition for serving on the CalOptima board. She advocated for providing health care and dental care to all, and having affordable and fair housing in the community.
Kennedy, the former executive director of the OC Human Relations Commission, said Forbath was a volunteer who put her “time, money and energy on the line in defense of social justice issues for the poor.” Kennedy said she was never paid for her time as executive director and CEO of SOS.
Mary Hornbuckle, a former Costa Mesa councilmember, said Forbath never held back in her activism and always “looked out for the underdog and for those less fortunate.”
“She never hesitated to speak for what she knew was right,” Hornbuckle said. “And for that, she was widely admired. She was a role model for me and for so many others.”
Jean Marie Swain was born in St. Albans, New York, a neighborhood of Queens, in 1930 and was the youngest of four children in an Irish Catholic family. The family moved to Hollywood in 1933 where her father worked as a cameraman at RKO Pictures and later in the film lab.
She graduated from Conaty Girls High in Los Angeles where she was student body president and later earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English literature from Immaculate Heart College.
She brought awareness to the desolate living conditions farmworkers in the county endured, which became one early focus for SOS. Through the Orange County Interfaith Committee to Aid Farmworkers, Forbath focused her attention on raising awareness for farmworkers’ living conditions at a dozen migrant labor camps throughout the county that became scrutinized in the early 1970s in an Orange County Grand Jury investigation.
“I think people want to help,” Cappellini said. “They just need to know that there is a need. I think that’s what my mom did a beautiful job of, letting people know of the need in her area.”
She was heavily involved with the United Farm Workers, Cappellini said, handing out leaflets to people to boycott grapes and lettuce outside of grocery stores. During Cesar Chavez’s 1,000-mile march from the Mexican border to Sacramento in 1975, Forbath let Chavez and about 40 farmworkers sleep at the family’s Costa Mesa home for a night.
After leading SOS for more than two decades, Forbath retired and a few years later founded the nonprofit Save Our Youth.
Joe Erickson, one of the early supporters and board members of the Save Our Youth nonprofit, which provides after-school programs, guidance counseling and scholarships for the Newport-Mesa area, said Forbath filled a need in the area to uplift young people to reach new opportunities.
“She put her whole heart into it,” Erickson said. “She’s the mother of seven kids and, in a lot of ways, she was a mother to a lot of these people at Save Our Youth as well.”
The organization has given out $4.5 million in scholarships for the area’s youth over the years. Early on, it was funded by an anonymous donor who put great trust in Forbath, Cappellini said.
Forbath was a devout Catholic whose faith pushed her to start SOS to take on the call to help your neighbors, Cappellini said. She died on Easter Sunday, an hour after Pope Francis did, Cappellini said.
“We watched Easter Mass together with all the family around and her Irish Catholic faith with the social justice teaching was just a huge part of her life and all of our teaching,” Cappellini said. “For us, the pope amplified all the things that she’s always stood for. She was called by her church to do something.”
Forbath’s funeral will be held at 1 p.m. on May 9 at Saints Simon and Jude Catholic Church in Huntington Beach. The family suggests those wishing to make donations in her honor consider the “Jean Forbath Scholarship” at SOY or the emergency services fund at Share Our Selves.
Forbath is survived by her children, Steve (and Betsy) Forbath, Kathy (and Bahram) Esfahani, Mary (and Cesar) Cappellini, Susie Forbath, Patty (and Steve) Uchytil and Brian (and Georgina) Forbath, and 15 grandchildren. Her fifth child, Joe Forbath, died in 2021.
“There’s a big difference between charity and justice, and what we would like to fight for is justice,” Forbath once said in a video interview for the OC Human Relations Legacy Awards. “Unfortunately, charity is needed.”
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