Leona von Brethorst (1923-2010)

Leona von Brethorst (1923-2010) born Stinking Creek in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, and apparently raised in abject poverty. “We didn’t know we were poor,” she says, because “everyone else was like us.” She remembers going to school without shoes while she and her sister shared three dresses.

After living in Detroit for a time during World War II, she moved to Long Beach, California where she met and married Robert Von Brethorst.

She went to live in Long Beach and for over 50 years was a member of Bethany Chapel writing poems and songs, and always active in her church, ultimately organizing and running an outreach that fed the homeless.