I only met Mary a couple of times, but that was enough to make a powerful impression. Today's event was a fitting tribute to an amazingly energetic and committed woman. Mary was a connector--she liked linking people who shared common interests and goals. Fittingly, at the memorial, people celebrated her life by connecting and communicating with each other.

The following is from a comment I made in the SNR after Cosmo Garvin's wonderful obit for Mary Brill....

In Memoriam: Mary Brill…

This is a very touching tribute to Mary, from the title, to the picture, to content (all of which is BY FAR more kind and gentle and telling than that which was published in Das Bee), your piece is a sensitive portrait of a sensitive person, who, for a period of five years in the early 1990's, I worked with closely.

In addition to her role with SCAN, Mary also helped found the Sacramento Mediation Center, which provided dispute resolution services as an alternative to the courts for small claims, neighbor, landlord tenant, and other issues that would otherwise clog the courthouse steps with claims judges would simply rather not deal with.

Though I found her public politics a bit more conservative than my own, especially in her insider relationship with the Sac PD, she and I had some of the most interesting and involved conversations I’ve ever had with ANYONE – and my life is marked by its interesting conversations, which made Mary’s conversations so memorable.

The girl could CHAT! She was a Gemini, after all… Perhaps this is why she used to lose her voice periodically – well, that and the fact that she smoked like a chimney…

But she was indeed a presence in this town, and she quite literally knew EVERYONE, including, eventually, my mother and myself. Mary worked in the most challenging parts of Sacramento, among some of the most challenging people in Sacramento, with some of the most difficult subject matter in Sacramento, including negligent developers and the tenement apartment complexes they owned, the people of modest means who dwelled in those apartments, law enforcement, other community organizers, and gangs.

During one meeting at her very humble abode in SLP, she listened constantly to the police radio blotter, I suppose gathering crime stats in certain areas to be up to speed if the need to confront such issues ever arose, though I never really understood why…

But what she really was was a font of information about this town in arenas nobody else wished to deal with – she filled a unique niche, a necessary role, in a sometimes single-handed attempt to better this community and the lives of its residents, especially those residents who do not have a voice at City Hall. She spoke for them, she acted for them, she did for them what no one else would or could, and for that I’m sure there’s a lovely little apartment in the nearer and most comfy reaches of the next life for her to take a good rest in… She earned it…

I met Mary many years ago when she started coming to Scan. She later took over the chair (Pat Handly was the chair when I first attended) and worked very diligently to continue the connection between city neighborhood groups and county. She was a full time neighborhood activist in many fields and was a master of connecting people who needed to be connected to achieve mutual goals. One thing people did not often know was her tremendous sense of humor, which I found very endearing.

She was not in the best of health when I first met her but that never deterred her efforts, diligence and effectiveness. Such individuals are rare who work so tirelessly for no financial gain of their own