Canon Carol Lanning – a former senior warden of St. Matthew’s Church in Pacific Palisades and a longtime assistant to the late actor Charlton Heston – died Feb. 18. She was 95 and had been in declining health.
Lanning is survived by her husband, Mike, and her children Phil, Chris, and Dawn, their spouses, six grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life is planned for a future time after the eventual re-opening of St. Matthew’s Church, which survived the Palisades fire but remains closed while the campus is being refurbished. Lanning’s ashes will be interred in the columbarium at St. Matthew’s, in a niche near that of her late granddaughter.
Married at the Parish of St. Matthew in 1973, Carol and Mike Lanning both were named honorary canons of the Diocese of Los Angeles in 2017 by Bishop John Harvey Taylor recognizing their decades of service to the parish and community.
Born April 29, 1929, Lanning was adopted just after her father graduated from Nashotah House, an Episcopal seminary in Wisconsin. As a newborn, she moved with her family to Needles, Calif., where her father took up his job as priest at St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Mission. Growing up as the daughter of an Episcopal priest of the Diocese of Los Angeles, she gained a lifelong view of ministry in the region.
Lanning served on the vestry of St. Matthew’s for multiple terms and through the years mentored many parish clergy and lay leaders, also leading the youth group.
Of her work with Charlton Heston, Lanning often quipped that she continued as his “part-time temporary assistant” for 40 years.