Connie Worden (left), SCV Woman of the Year for 1975, passes the torch to Joyce Wayman, the 1976 Woman of the Year.

Joyce Wayman (1976) was Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital’s first director of volunteers. Normally a paid position, Wayman filled the full-time role as a volunteer. Later offered the position for pay, she declined. She had started helping in 1973 at Hillside Hospital in Saugus, Henry Mayo’s predecessor, after volunteering for several years at Holy Cross Hospital in Mission Hills. A 1956 Newhall arrival, Wayman was active in PTA while her children and stepchildren were in school, and she raised money and hosted foreign exchange students through American Field Service.

Connie Worden (1975) was a member of the William S. Hart Union High School District Governing Board, a leader on the Chamber of Commerce Transportation Committee, and co-chair of the effort to form Canyon County. Although county formation prevailed at the ballot box locally in 1976 (and again in 1978), secession required the consent of the entire county, and the rest of Los Angeles County refused to let the Santa Clarita Valley go. A decade later, Worden was vice chair of the successful effort to form the city of Santa Clarita.