July 2, 2025: Alice Waco, warrior for peace and justice in Sonoma County, dies at 94
From the Press Democrat, Sonoma County newspaper:
A former nun, Alice Waco was a Santa Rosa teacher who spent decades in service to various local and global causes, co-founding of the county’s Peace and Justice Center.
KERRY BENEFIELD THE PRESS DEMOCRAT July 2, 2025, 10:56AM
Anti-war activist. Teacher. Agitator. Runner. Global philanthropist. Partner. Education advocate. Former nun.
Alice Waco of Santa Rosa was all of those things and more. But from her long list of achievements and activities, according to those who knew well and admired her life’s work, two callings rose above the rest for Waco: Thoughtful friend and fierce fighter for justice.
There was ample proof that in the constant stream of loved ones and friends, well-wishers and long time colleagues who filled her room at Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after she suffered a stroke late last week.
“Alice was a pillar of the community,” said friend and neighbor Jonathan Taylor. “If you were on the left and into community activism and supporting the rights for all people and a champion of the poor? That was Alice.”
A founder of the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County, a continuous supporter of Friends of Cantera which supported education in Nicaragua, and a tireless anti-war protester and advocate for all manner of human rights and nonviolence projects, Waco died Sunday morning at Memorial Hospital. She was 94.
For decades, she was a champion of liberal and leftist causes in Sonoma County — there among the crowd of arrested Santa Rosa protesters two decades ago denouncing the U.S. war with Iraq and there two decades earlier as leader of the Santa Rosa teacher’s union in its first-ever districtwide strike in 1980.
“She was a force to be reckoned with,” said Taylor.
“She had amazingly disparate groups that she hung out with,” he said. “Alice was a candle and the rest of us are moths.
Her upbringing in a large, poor Midwestern family deeply influenced Waco’s regard for people and their needs.
She was born June 17, 1931, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Alice and Stephen Waco. She was the sixth of nine children. A sister died before she was born.
Alice Waco as a student at Catholic Girls High in Los Angeles around 1950. (Waco family)
The family moved west to Santa Monica when Waco was three. She attended elementary school in the Ocean Park neighborhood and eventually went to an all-girls Catholic High School in Los Angeles. The family struggled for money, according to Waco’s cousin Angela Gleason of Santa Cruz, so Waco took a job in order to afford the bus fare.
In high school, Waco shone as an athlete, said her brother David Waco of Sonoma.
“She competed in school, mostly pentathlon,” he said. “She was the best in school at that.”
After high school, Waco joined a Catholic convent and became a nun, teaching school, for nearly two decades.
Alice Waco served as Sister Michael Marie, a Catholic nun, for nearly two decades. Here she is with her mother in 1960
She was serving as a nun at St. Benedict’s Deaf Center in San Francisco when she met the resident priest, Bill McGee. Both were growing away from the church.
She and other nuns asked to be allowed to rent a house rather than live at the convent. They were given permission on one condition: They meet daily with a priest.
Alice Waco served as Sister Michael Marie, a Catholic nun, for nearly two decades.
“So we found Bill McGee,” Waco told a Press Democrat reporter in 2004.
McGee and Waco left the church and married in 1974, becoming the nearly inseparable “Bill and Alice.”
Waco continued teaching, first chemistry and later becoming a counselor, according to longtime friend and fellow science teacher Susan Martin of Salem, Oregon.
She was working at Santa Rosa High School when, in 1980, she was also president of the Santa Rosa Teachers Association during its acrimonious 5-week strike that mired the county’s largest school district in conflict.
Waco appeared almost daily in the pages of The Press Democrat, articulating SRTA demands and, in late December, celebrating what she and others deemed a victory for teachers. A picture of Waco removing her yellow “On Strike” button appeared on the front page.
She brought that fighting spirit to all of her endeavors.
In 2003, she was again on the PD’s front page, this time shown while being arrested with four dozens others by Santa Rosa police after blocking the intersection of College and Mendocino avenues in a protest against the Iraq War.
In 2004, Waco helped lead another large demonstration against a Sonoma County appearance by notorious conservative and anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly.
Waco, the former nun, was interviewed while dressed as God, draped in an American flag and performing a mock wedding of a barefoot and pregnant woman to a broom.
Susan Swartz, the longtime former Press Democrat reporter, wrote in 2004 that when she’d call to ask Waco for comment, McGee would answer and say his wife was unavailable.
“Alice is getting arrested today,” he’d say.
That feistiness was there into her last years, said her good friend and neighbor, Taylor.
“When I met her, she was in her early 80s,” Taylor said. “She didn’t talk about her health and she didn’t talk about the weather and she didn’t talk about her cat. She talked about getting out on the streets and what the f--k is wrong with our government and how do we get them engaged? She wanted to talk about what she wanted to do.”
And she did it.
On June 14, three days before her 94th birthday, Waco participated in the nationwide “No Kings” protests.
Alice at the Anti Trump No Kings demonstration on the Saturday before her death
But she also lived well, traveled widely and quietly pursued causes she believed in. She raised funds for peace and justice work in war-ravaged and impoverished areas of the world, often bringing friends and supporters to the places where their donations were being put to work.
Waco was a key player in the 1990 establishment of the sister city program between Santa Rosa and Cherkasy, Ukraine, said longtime friend and fellow teacher Sonja Bedford.
Waco was a relentless fundraiser and supporter of student exchange programs, Bedford said, often making the trans-Atlantic flight herself. Waco and Bedford were in Cherkasy in 1991 when Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union.
In her travels promoting peace, Waco forged deep connections with Ukrainians, including one woman she and Bedford helped immigrate to the U.S. in 2000.
For years she also traveled to, and supported Cantera, an education and humanitarian program in Nicaragua. Her travels and justice-rooted work also included trips to Russia, Ukraine, El Salvador, Guatemala and Cuba.
Cantera, a nonprofit serving vulnerable populations around Managua, Nicaragua, was of special importance to Waco, said longtime friend, fellow teacher and supporter Andy Witthohn.
“Once or twice a year she would spend a couple of weeks down there, giving pep talks to the staff or bringing down donors from America to increase the financial support,” he said.
It was two U.S.-entangled wars — in Nicaragua and El Salvador — as well as President Ronald Reagan’s so-called Star Wars nuclear weapons program, that provided a major impetus for the creation of the Peace and Justice Center of Sonoma County.
In 2024, the nonprofit action group marked it 40th year, and last month it was one of the major players in the “No Kings” protests. Waco, one of the cofounders, was on hand to witness it.
For decades she worked with The Alternatives to Violence Project — USA. She facilitated workshops that included strategies for constructive conflict resolution in jails and prisons, including the Sonoma County Adult Detention Facility.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that Waco co-facilitated an AVP community workshop, according to friend Kate Jenkins.
She also spent time working with inmates farther afield, traveling to and from the High Desert State Prison in Susanville.
“I met several ex-cons that Alice became friends with — which she wasn’t supposed to do,” Martin said. “But Alice just collected community.”
On her calendar for this weekend was a brunch with friends, a birthday party and another event Sunday.
“She was so political but so joyful and so alive,” Gleason said. “I think she carried it well. I think she had some kind of inner peace. It was probably her spirituality that kept her sane.”
Her death Sunday brought together those wide circles of loved ones and people in positions of power and influence.
Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, took to Facebook to comment on her passing.
“Saddened by the passing of my friend Alice Waco,” he wrote. “Alice was an educator and activist in Sonoma County and worked hard to improve our community, including through her great work advocating for peace. She worked tirelessly with me on my first campaign for State Senate, as well.”
In the months before the U.S. invaded Iraq in early 2003, Waco was at the fore of public actions organizers hoped would bolster anti-war sentiment. While the U.S. invasion and military went ahead, Waco’s resolve did not waver.
“Being involved is what gives me hope, being an agent in the whole change process,” she said to a reporter in November 2022, just months before being arrested, again, in the streets of Santa Rosa for blocking traffic. “I’ve always felt it wasn’t enough to just be passionate.”
Her husband, Bill McGee, died after suffering a bicycle crash in 2004. Among immediate family members, is survived by her brother, David Waco of Sonoma.
A celebration of Waco’s life is being planned but is not yet scheduled.
You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Instagram @kerry.benefield.
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