Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Pasadena Area Community College District; Trustee Area 3

A brief biography of Luther Renfroe January 2001

Born in Chicago, Ill. on December 29, 1931, Attended grade and high school in Chicago. As a teenager in the late forties he participated in sit-ins in downtown restaurants as a member of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He enlisted at the beginning of the Korean War in the United States Air Force in 1950, honorably discharged in 1954. After service he attended Chicago City College at night while working full time for the Dept. of Army in communications. In 1955 he married Peggy, his wife of 45 years. They moved to Pasadena, California in 1957 where their three children were born. They now have 5 grandchildren and two great grandchildren He graduated from Pasadena City College in 1961 with an AA degree in electronic technology. He has worked for several local electronic companies as well as JPL. He started as an electronic technician and held positions as shift supervisor, project manager, department manager and retired with the title of Senior Field Service Engineer. He has owned two successful businesses. Meteorological instrumentation and test equipment and customer billing units for telephone exchanges. His job as a field service engineer took him to many other states and foreign countries to oversee the installation of electronic equipment and training their personnel on how to use and trouble-shoot that equipment.

He was active in helping with the desegregation of the Pasadena schools. He has served on the Pasadena Humane Relations Committee, Chairman of the Parents Advisory Committee for compensatory Education of the Pasadena Unified School District. President of Madison School PTA. President of the Congregation and Chairman of the Board of Directors for First Lutheran Church of Pasadena. 1994-1998. Presently he serves on the Pasadena Senior Commission and was elected in November 1997 to the Board of Trustees of Pasadena City College. Presently the President of the board. He is the first of any minority to serve on the Board of Trustees. He is also a member of and the Minority Affairs Committee and Association of Latino Community College Trustees, both part of the Association of Community College Trustees, a national organization. A member of the organizing committee for the Association of Latino/Afro-American/Asian-Pacific Trustee conference to be held in Riverside, California on 14 Nov, 2001.