Dear Neighbor,
We are mourning the death and celebrating the life of an extraordinary, inspiring leader, Alice Wolf.
Long before I met Alice, I heard about her courageous, progressive leadership as a Cambridge School Committee member, city councilor and mayor. She fought for many issues that were extremely controversial at the time - and won: making Cambridge a sanctuary city, making condoms available at the high school, allowing domestic partnerships in the city before equal marriage was legal, and keeping rent control (until a state-wide ballot question ended it). After her election to the House, one of her most significant victories was in helping protect equal marriage.
I was very fortunate to serve with Alice for four years as co-chairs of the Committee on Elder Affairs. We were particularly proud to pass her very important bill regulating nursing home dementia care units, as well as the Silver Alert program. We also worked to stabilize the Adult Day Health Program. The photo is of the Dementia Care Units bill signing with Gov. Patrick.
One of her major achievements, after years of persistent work, was the passage of Chapter 222, which made school discipline fairer, reduced the number and length of school exclusions, and ensured that students continued to make progress during exclusions. Alice continued that important work after retiring from the legislature, as a senior advisor at Mass. Advocates for Children.
Alice and I also worked together for many years on the Equal Pay Act, which reduced the wage gap for women and people of color, as I will write about in my next newsletter. The photo is of us at the bill signing with Dorothy Simonelli, one of the Everett cafeteria workers whose unsuccessful lawsuit demanding equal pay with custodians got Alice and me to file our bill.
If Alice and her family, like thousands of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe, had been turned away, it would have been an incredible loss. Shaped by that experience, she led many hard fights for people with less access to power. Her purpose and influence live on in so many people she mentored and inspired to carry on those fights.
This poem has been on my mind since learning of Alice's death:
When Great Trees Fall
by Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance, fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of
dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.