Shirley Whitney; Leading GOP Volunteer

Shirley Whitney, 89, leading Republican volunteer in the San Fernando Valley who designed popular political buttons. Whitney was a Democrat for many years until the murder of Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968 changed her view of her party. A longtime member of the National Rifle Assn., she was sitting in a Democratic candidate’s headquarters watching the news report of Kennedy’s assassination when “everybody turned around and looked at me, as if I was to blame,� she recalled years later. Realizing that her conservative views didn’t belong in the Democratic Party, she re-registered as a Republican. She became known to major Republican candidates throughout the Valley for her skills at organizing candidate headquarters, heading Republican women’s clubs, supervising telephone campaigns and fund-raisers, and registering voters. She was best known for a sideline of developing political pins. Her most famous button depicted the head of former Gov. Jerry Brown on the body of an insect with the inscriptions “Fruit Fly of the Year,� followed by “Governor Moonbeam,� a design that delighted conservatives who seethed over Brown’s handling of the 1981 infestation of Mediterranean fruit flies in Northern California. She sold 15,000 of the pins for $1 each, enough to rent office space for Republicans in the Valley for part of 1982. Another Whitney button that circulated during 1984 showed two women holding a banner with the bright-red letters E, R and A, which stood for “Elect Reagan Again,� not Equal Rights Amendment. “I’m waiting for some ERA supporter to bop me on the head for that one,� she said at the time. On Thursday of Alzheimer’s disease and kidney failure at a Pomona nursing home.