Cheering From the Den During a Virtual Convention

In 1952, she attended her first convention, in Chicago, as a member of the Democratic youth leadership from California.

The following year, as a 22-year-old senior at the University of Southern California, she ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. With friends, she went door to door distributing leaflets and little bars of soap. Her slogan was “Let’s Clean Up L.A.,” and she timed her door-knocking forays deliberately.

“We knew on Monday people would be home to watch ‘I Love Lucy,’” she said.

The youngest woman ever elected to the City Council, she played a pivotal role in bringing the Dodgers baseball team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. She also helped the city secure the 1960 Democratic National Convention.

It was partly at her urging, she said, that Bobby Kennedy agreed to move John F. Kennedy’s speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination from the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena to the larger Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. His main worry, she said, was that his brother would not draw a crowd large enough to fill the 100,000-seat venue. “I called everyone I could, and those buses started rolling in,” Ms. Wyman recalled.

A poster-size picture of Kennedy talking to Ms. Wyman while he was president graces the staircase wall in her house.

Ms. Wyman does not regret missing the 1968 convention in Chicago, where thousands of Vietnam War protesters battled police officers in the streets. Her husband, Eugene, attended — and left early, she said. “That one was a mess,” she said.

After leaving the City Council, Ms. Wyman took jobs in the entertainment industry and supported the arts and humanitarian causes in Los Angeles. But the Democratic Party remained her life’s work.