“Give all the love you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can,” are some of the lyrics to one of the late Dr. Carol Weyland Conner’s favorite songs, which was played at a June 3 memorial celebration of her life and work.
As someone who gave all the love she could, Conner poured decades of service into creating two nonprofits: Following Francis in 2011 and White Pony Express (WPE) in 2013. She died peacefully April 22 in her Walnut Creek home at age 80.
“She was a woman who made a huge impact on the Bay Area through her example of tireless and selfless service to the unhoused and marginalized people in our communities,” said Steve Spraitzar, who handles public relations for Pleasant Hill-based WPE, a food-rescue organization serving all of Contra Costa County.
Born in 1942 on a Pawnee American Indian reservation 70 miles from Prague, Oklahoma, her father, a music teacher, was stationed there in the military during World War II. From there, her family moved to Minnesota and later to California’s Central Valley town of Visalia, where she ultimately grew up and graduated from the public school system as a valedictorian of her high school class.
Conner received her bachelor’s degree in English literature from UC Berkeley. She then studied French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and medieval studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore before receiving her Ph.D. in 1976 in clinical psychology from Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
Eventually settling in central Contra Costa County, Conner was a psychologist, teacher and the murshida (spiritual director) of Sufism Reoriented (sufismreoriented.org/murshida-carol-conner), a religious group based in Walnut Creek.
Married to Gary Conner, a retired attorney and former executive director of WPE who passed away in 2022, Conner did not have any children of her own and both of her brothers are deceased. She is survived by her stepchildren, Marika Beck and Robin Conner (whom she helped raise); grandchildren, Talin, Jonah, Cora, Sophie and Vivani; her niece, Lara Weyland; grandniece, Reina; and grandnephew, Nico.
Conner spent recent years dividing her time between her homes in Walnut Creek, Washington, D.C., and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she had a summer residence. She worked as an assistant professor of child health and development at George Washington University School of Medicine, specializing in adolescent medicine.
“After teaching for several years at George Washington, she went into private practice as a therapist, practicing for 25 years, first in Washington, D.C. and later in Walnut Creek, during which time she was also a volunteer counselor with Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in San Francisco,” said Spraitzar.
Robert “Bob” Carpenter, WPE’s president and the chair of its board of directors, said Conner understood and lived the central truth every day that life is a unity and all people are part of one human family.
“Loving service to all of life animated everything she did,” said Carpenter. “It was her pattern to walk 6 to 10 miles every day in the communities where she lived, greeting those she met as a friend and equal. If she sensed a financial need in someone — unhoused, working poor or an elderly person she sensed was struggling — she would give them money right on the spot. She always carried carefully gift wrapped $100 bills and gave them instinctively to those in need. Many of those receiving these gifts never even knew her name but felt her love.”
Eve Birge, WPE’s executive director, said “Conner started White Pony Express because there is so much material wealth in America that no one needs to go to bed without proper food, clothing or shelter.
“She knew there was a simple solution that could end the problems of hunger and marginalization for good — a new paradigm: voluntary shared abundance. This idea of ‘shared abundance’ caught on like wildfire, and the program has never stopped growing. Her work through WPE has led to new opportunities to share love with others in the service of life’s unity.”
Terry Johnson, the executive director of Following Francis, talked about when Carol was in graduate school and lived in a poor neighborhood in Washington, DC, where she witnessed the daily struggles and hardships of families, especially their children.
“She told herself that as soon as she had a surplus, she wanted to help people in every way she could,” said Johnson. “Carol would say, ‘Love is dynamic in action and contagious in effect.’ She believed the best way for us to express love was to speak lovingly toward everyone, think lovingly toward everyone and most importantly to act lovingly towards all. And she was a role model of loving service in perpetual action since I first met her 47 years ago.”
Johnson recalled a quote Conner referred to often.
“She would quote Francis of Assisi, who at a major turning point in his life was sternly advised by his best friend to leave the leper in need and ‘let someone else help him.’ Francis replied firmly and matter-of-factly, ‘There is no one else,’ ” said Johnson. “Carol always felt this way. She was there. This was her opportunity to act, and she taught all of us who studied with her or who volunteered in her programs to walk through life with this idea: There is no one else. This person in front of us needs our help right now.”
Carpenter, who also knew Conner for almost 50 years and worked with her on many projects, said her values and unwavering commitment to others was an inspiration to him and all who were privileged to serve at her side.
“When she founded White Pony Express in 2013, her instructions to all who were volunteers in this program were, ‘We only give the very best in every situation. If it was food, you only give the highest quality. Only food that you would feed your own family. If it was clothes, you give what the person liked and preferred in style and color, always new or lightly worn, always freshly ironed or neatly presented,’ said Carpenter. “Hers was not charity work, it was a natural expression of love — as you would share with a dear friend or family member.”
In 2015, Conner received the Jefferson Award from San Francisco CBS television station KPIX and the Threads of Hope Award from Diablo Magazine, and she received the California AARP Andrus Award for community service in 2019.
Charleen Earley is a freelance writer and journalism professor at Foothill and Diablo Valley colleges. Reach her at [email protected] or 925-383-3072.
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