A Church That Has Shown Compassion

Re “Church Is Monument to Activism,” June 16: Bravo to Father Will Wauters and the Church of the Epiphany. They continue to be on the frontline of issues that affect their community.

When the previous hosts of our ecumenical World AIDS Day church service backed out because of opposition to the AIDS monument we were building in nearby Lincoln Heights, the Church of the Epiphany welcomed us with open arms.

We will never forget their support, love and compassion.

Richard Zaldivar

Executive director, The Wall-

Las Memorias Project

Los Angeles

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I took the photograph on Page B2 of Cesar Chavez at the Church of the Epiphany on Sept. 14, 1980. The occasion was a special Mass marking Mexican Independence Day -- and celebrating the 15th anniversary of the Delano grape strike and the founding of the farmworkers union.

Chavez gave the sermon for the Mass. That same year, 75 farmworkers were temporarily housed in the church parish hall for four days.

Nancy Tovar

Church Archivist

Los Angeles

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If she were alive, my great-great-grandmother would be surprised to read that in the late 1880s Lincoln Heights (then known as East Los Angeles) was “one of the wealthiest, most fashionable areas of the city.”

When she built her family home in 1883 up the street from the future site of the Church of the Epiphany on North Griffin Avenue, it cost all of $800, consistent with a November 1889 description of East Los Angeles by The Times as “preeminently the location for these most admirable middle-class homes ... neat cottages abound whichever way one turns.”

Her house is long gone, but the modest bungalow her son built in 1904 just a few doors down is still there.

Jim Tranquada

South Pasadena