By Richard C. Keating
Winner of the Piasa Palisades Group 2015 Spirit of Sierra Award.
Gayle began coming to Sierra Club meetings about a decade ago and she immediately began to participate in a variety of ways. It would be easy enough, and non-controversial, to write a paragraph in this fashion, to describe her great beauty, friendliness, and willingness to work hard for a just cause. But I can’t stop with platitudes. What was really interesting about Gayle, what impressed me the most, was that she was an original.
By her account, Gayle grew up in a Catholic family, and for some years attended a parochial school. Early on, she developed a love of reading science fiction. As a kid with a strong personality, she had traits that caused her problems at school and home. Her tendency to be an iconoclast, and her outspoken questioning of religious “truths,” caused her to reject Catholicism. College was not considered appropriate for this bright young girl, but she managed to enter SIUE anyway, where she took courses for a year and a half until it was no longer feasible. Gayle was especially drawn to math and science.
At this point, needing income to support her sons, she began an astonishingly varied work experience. Much of her time was spent in the “man’s world," working as a refinery technician. This was difficult and dangerous work, and led to at least one life-threatening accident. That work provided the best pay of what was available to her, which allowed her to support her two sons, Brock and Braun, through college. As a result of intense curiosity about North American geography, Gayle spent several years exploring the continent as an assistant to a landscape photographer. In later years, she had a therapeutic massage practice, and stints working for the US Census Bureau.
Over several years, she and I enjoyed reading stimulating books and comparing notes on some of the most vexing problems facing our society. It was not lost on me that Gayle’s young life bore a striking parallel to that of our club’s founder, John Muir. Both molded their habits of progressive, independent thinking in the absence of mentors that such a mindset usually requires. I find these personal transformations inspiring.
Suffering life with courage and compassion, Gayle nurtured the instinct to contribute more than she received. One of a kind indeed.