From the Ground Up

Winter
2009 Issue

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Mary Beth Doyle, 1961-2004

A Legacy of Courage, Hope & Joy

By Michael Garfield

February/March Issue, 2006

On November 13, 2004,
the world lost a great spirit, and the
environmental movement lost a hero.
My great friend, Mary Beth Doyle,
the Ecology Center’s longtime
environmental health campaigner,
died that day in a tragic car accident.

I’ve known Mary Beth Doyle since 1993 when she first came to work with us at the Ecology Center. Like everyone else who knew her, I miss her dearly.

Mary Beth was a central figure in virtually every major achievement of the last decade that the Ecology Center holds to its name. She helped shut down incinerators that no one thought would be stopped. She aided dozens of local communities that were struggling to solve some of the worst environmental problems you can imagine. She helped get the State of Michigan to ban mercury thermometers, toughen its fish consumption advisories, and pass new laws to control out-of-state waste. She was active in national coalitions to reduce the use of toxic chemicals, and she was a leader in local campaigns here in Washtenaw County to save land and address our environmental problems.

The list goes on and on. She was exceptionally talented. Her activist vitae is spelled out beautifully in a proclamation written by Senator Liz Brater, and signed by Governor Jennifer Granholm, that we’ve printed in full. Instead of writing about her accomplishments, though, I’d like to tell you about the way she made things happen.

Mary Beth did her work like she lived her life – with courage, hope, and a gloriously infectious joy.

Working for an environmental advocacy organization is a little different than other lines of work. You fight powerful interests; you work long hours; you take your share of verbal abuse; and you lose your share of battles. You don’t take on the world’s largest corporations just because it’s your job, or with the hope of making a fortune. Lots of people burn out quickly. Most don’t stick with it long.

Mary Beth did her work like she lived her life—with courage, hope, and a gloriously infectious joy.

Unless they’re lucky enough to work with someone like Mary Beth, who would insist, any time we were debating whether to do this campaign or that, this tactic or the other, that whatever we do, it had better be fun!

She would treat an EPA public hearing or a protest over air pollution as a party. And since she probably couldn’t wear her party dress there, she might wear a giant fish costume, or an enormous water droplet, or something else to liven up the scene.

When a toxic waste dump developer told the Detroit Free Press that only “dumb housewives” were opposing his dump, Mary Beth dressed us all up as housewives to picket the developer’s tony Oakland County neighborhood.

When the City of Toronto started sending trash to Michigan we collected thousands of protest letters and decided to deliver them personally to the city’s mayor, along with a bag or two of their trash. We called it the “Return to Sender Trash Bash” tour, and the lights went on in her head. Within hours, she found four Elvis impersonators for the tour, and she’d re-written the song’s lyrics (see below). She was so proud of her anti-trash ditty that she got Alex Sergay, by day the Ecology Center’s IT guy, and by night a local rock-and-roller, to record our own CD. We sent it out to the press with notice of the tour and were thrilled to hear it playing on Windsor’s CKLW as we started driving. Canadian Customs hassled us over the garbage bags and the boxes of letters but when they found out what we were doing, they said, “Oh, we’ve been hearing about you all day on the radio. Go ahead!”

Mary Beth was hope-filled because she was filled with a humble confidence. Not a quiet confidence, because nothing she did was quiet, but a confidence that she would assert to us over and over again. No matter what the setback on a campaign, or event, she would implore us not to worry. She’d tell us: “It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be great. It’s gonna be great.”

I will miss hearing her say that so very much.

And more than anything else, I am going to miss the enormous wellspring of love and concern she showed me, our colleagues, and, I think, everyone she knew. Within the Ecology Center, and often within our statewide and national environmental networks, she would ask: “How can I help? What can I do?” In many ways, Mary Beth was our heart and our soul.

In what I believe is a portent of our triumphs to come, Mary Beth’s most recent achievement was completed seven weeks after her death. On Jan. 4, 2005, Governor Granholm signed bills that ban two dangerous flame retardants, and in a fitting touch, the new law was named after one of its leading proponents, Mary Beth Doyle (see page 8).

Indeed, Mary Beth leaves us a legacy of achievement. She leaves us wonderful memories – a smile that stretched from ear to ear, a laugh you could hear four blocks away, and a voice that spoke twice as fast as anyone else in the Midwest. And finally, she leaves us a challenge – to carry on with her work, and with her everlasting joy.

The world has lost a hero, but her life instills us with hope and inspiration for the future.

“Return to Sender”

I wrote a letter this morning
Sent it special D
Addressed it to Toronto
It said you better listen to me.

I wrote upon it ...

Return to sender
Address unknown
Don’t want your trash here,
So keep it home.

No need to quarrel
No need to have a spat
But if Canada sends us its trash,
We’ll just send it back.

Send us bacon and hockey
Beer and curling, too
But if you send us your garbage,
We’ll send it right back to you.

And write upon it ...

Return to sender
Address unknown
Don’t want your trash here,
So keep it home.

No need to quarrel
No need to have a spat.
But if Canada sends us its trash,
We’ll just send it back.

Now Toronto, don’t worry
Here’s what you need to do.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle.
That’s our advice to you.

Return to sender
Address unknown
Don’t want your trash here,
So keep it home.

(Repeat chorus)

— Mary Beth Doyle

Original lyrics by Winfield Scott
and Otis Blackwell

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