Lonnie Frisbee
Published 1993 March 30 in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.
A memorial service is set for Friday for Lonnie Frisbee, a Pentecostal minister who lived in the Santa Cruz area in the 1970s and founded ministries here. Widely known as the "hippie preacher" for two decades, Mr. Frisbee died March 12 at his Newport Beach home of a brain tumor. He was 43. Mr. Frisbee was a leader in the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and gained international attention from his ministries to young people. He was a native of Santa Ana who moved to Santa Cruz in 1972 from Costa Mesa. Mr. Frisbee first gained attention at age 16 when he began preaching in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. His unorthodox ways, long hair, beard and bare feet gained him the title "the hippie preacher." In Santa Cruz, he helped establish a church, several discipleship homes, and a Christian commune on Soquel Avenue known as The Land that existed from 1975 to 1985. He preached often at the New Life Center. He moved from the area in 1977 but returned frequently, most recently in January. In the 1980s, Mr. Frisbee traveled to South Africa to aid in the founding of churches. He also started an orphanage in Brazil. Mr. Frisbee was recently was on staff of the Set Free Christian Fellowship, in Anaheim, a radical outreach ministry to the dispossessed. Mr. Frisbee is survived by his mother, Jeanette Graham of Banning; and brother Stanley Frisbee of Costa Mesa. A funeral was held March 17 in Garden Grove. The memorial service will be 7 p.m. Friday at Lighthouse Christian Fellowship, 4525 Soquel Drive, Soquel.
This newspaper obituary is interesting because it brings to light a few facts that were previously unknown to me. Santa Cruz is located on the northern side of the Monterey Bay area in California. Also, it also reports that Lonnie had done some ministry work in Santa Cruz, and that he was for a time on the staff at Phil Aguilar's church in Anaheim. I am still in the process of trying to track down more details, but at this point I believe that the "New Life Center" may possibly be connected with someone named Steve Stiles.