Mary Beth: Advocate
and Friend
It’s
been more than two days now since the call came saying that
Mary Beth had lost her life in a car accident. It will take
more than two years to accept that this really happened, that
we’ve lost one of Michigan’s most formidable and
effective environmental advocates, and what’s more, a
dear friend beloved by many.
The word
“unruly” has an unfortunately negative connotation
in the minds of some, but in the case of Mary Beth, it is
an emphatic word of praise. Mary Beth was unruly in the sense
that she could not be ruled – not by government indifference,
not by corporate propaganda, and most of all not by the answer
“no.” She never accepted “no” in her quest
for a more just, more humane and environmentally healthy society.
She was
unfaltering in her conviction that the individual can make
a difference. Her work is proof of her belief. She helped
shut down Michigan’s polluting medical waste incinerators.
She did some of the most effective initial organizing and
educating that led to the enactment of laws limiting out-of-state
trash and promoting recycling. She was a key strategist in
the effort to protect women of child-bearing age from poisons
in fish when the State of Michigan tried to do away with science-based
advisories. She was in the midst of a monumental new effort
to enlist Michigan pediatricians in the effort to protect
our most vulnerable from pollution.
Her empathy
was always with the individual citizen, or small group of
citizens, fighting against the odds to stop environmental
health damage or to promote an environmentally sound alternative.
She was the most ethical advocate I’ve ever known.
Each friend
of Mary Beth’s will harbor private memories of the gifts
she left us. I’ll always remember her quick, hearty laugh;
her generosity with time and empathy; and the unfaltering
way in which she cultivated and nurtured our friendship.
At the
Ecology Center and in Ann Arbor as a whole, she found a family
of people with shared commitment and made a warm home. It’s
fitting that her work will be carried on in her name there
by her closest friends, and by future generations of determined,
undaunted, and charismatic advocates like her.
But we
will always miss Mary Beth.
-- Dave
Dempsey
