The first woman to ever serve as mayor of Calimesa has died from COVID-19. Shirley A. Morton passed away March 31, according to her daughter. She was 89.
Initially, “she had no symptoms. She wasn’t sick, no cough or anything like that,” Morton’s daughter Michelle said. She was on hospice at the time with her daughter in Yucaipa where the family was “hunkered down.” They do not know how she contracted the virus.
Morton was an original member of the Calimesa City Council. She was one of the first people elected to the dais after its incorporation in 1990. She became mayor two years later.
“My mom, she loved the city, she loved the people and she just wanted the best for everybody,” Michelle told the News Mirror. “She wanted everybody to just have the best. She wanted her seniors to have a happy life and to be safe. She did everything that she could for them.”