“If a fundraiser came along, he’d organize it. “If someone needed help with bills, he’d throw a dinner,” Natter said. Possessing a personality as big as his heart, he was known and liked by just about everyone in the small community. Ayala also was active with the Kiwanis Club and Sierra Bible Church in Sonora. During his career, he served as a patrolman and sergeant, retiring as a lieutenant commander in Sonora.Īyala then shifted gears, stepping in to be the executive director of the Tuolumne County Chamber of Commerce for three years when the organization was struggling. Though that choice of vocation was made with an eye toward stability, Ayala soon realized that law enforcement was a good fit for his leadership and problem-solving skills. And he embraced that.”īorn in Burlingame and raised in San Bruno, Ayala married his high school sweetheart Nancy in 1974 in Long Beach and joined the Highway Patrol five years later. He was so charismatic that people just gravitated toward him. “He had the heart and the talent and the personality to meet just about any demand,” said his daughter Erin Natter. He just shifted his focus to his church and local civic groups around his Sonora home, filling needs, lending his time, getting things done. and Evans, Price is survived by daughters Stephanie Buchanan and Cheryl Price, as well as 10 grandchildren.Michael Ayala retired from the California Highway Patrol in 2009 after putting in 30 years. said that before the pandemic, the church had a congregation of roughly 6,000 people, a number that he estimates has grown massively during COVID-19 lockdown, with online videos reaching 20,000 to 30,000 viewers.īesides his widow, Price Jr. At times, the church has boasted membership of 28,000, a number the family says encompasses parishioners throughout its history. The church has a school and a youth center, hosts food and blood drives, and does prison outreach. “It was important to him to be that oasis in the desert, so to speak.” “We’re located where we are, where others might not want to come in and help,” said Price Jr. When the FaithDome opened in 1989, The Times called it “the nation’s largest house of worship,” with a 16,000-member congregation that made it the largest Protestant church in Southern California. The geodesic dome was also much cheaper than traditional architecture would have been for a sanctuary of its size. He joined her at a Baptist church, and preached for years while making a living at other jobs, such as driving a truck for Coca-Cola. Price’s family says his religious awakening began when he followed her to a Christian tent revival service. In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti described Price as “a towering giant of our faith community in Los Angeles and an inspiring force for justice worldwide,” and added: “His ministry had local roots, but a global impact - providing care, resources, and a helping hand to the most vulnerable in our city and far beyond our borders.”Ī Santa Monica native, Price met his future wife, Betty, in the early 1950s when they were both students at Dorsey High School. The Crenshaw Christian Center has served as a coronavirus testing site since early in the pandemic, and recently as a vaccination site. He wanted to lift them out of their ills and raise their hopes, that in God they could be something, do something, raise their children well.” “He had a heart for his own people, people of color. “He chose to build the FaithDome in the inner city, as opposed to doing it in the suburbs, because he wanted to minister to the disenfranchised,” said Angela Evans, his daughter and the church president. At the time, newspapers proclaimed it the largest geodesic church structure in the world, and it remains a landmark visible to air travelers arriving at Los Angeles International Airport. Opened in 1989 on the former site of Pepperdine University, Price’s South Vermont Avenue church was topped by a massive aluminum sphere known as the FaithDome, 320 feet in diameter and 63 feet high. His family said he had been in the hospital suffering from the virus infection for the last five weeks. Price, a televangelist who founded the Crenshaw Christian Center, a South Los Angeles megachurch with a 10,000-seat sanctuary, died Friday from COVID-19.
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