Gale McGovern

The Memorial Gathering for the Celebration of the Life of Gale McGovern will be held Sunday, May 6, 2012 at 3:00 pm, at the Rosendale Recreation Center (1055 Rte. 32, Rosendale, NY, 12472) Please join us! Bring a potluck to share and please label ingredients for your offering. Since Gale had so many friends from so many circles, we are asking people who would like to speak to contact us at kcathers@earthlink.net or call Karen or Miriam at 845-255-7711. We are wanting people to be prepared and brief so that we can plan ahead and give more people the opportunity to speak. Afterwards, we will be able to eat and mingle informally. Important: We could use help with setting up at 2pm (Farmers' Market runs until 2), cleaning up afterwards, and other tasks. We are looking for large coffee makers and the large thermoses/urns that can hold hot water/coffee. If you'd like to help or have the above items that we can use for the day, please call Karen/Miriam 845-255-7711 or email kcathers@earthlink.net. Gale McGovern, the grandmother of Ulster County activism, has died at the age of 73. Her death, on Dec. 27, was announced by the Simpson-Gaus Funeral Home on Friday. McGovern graduated from Boston University in the 1960s and then migrated to Manhattan, eventually landing an editing job at Doubleday. McGovern embraced the 1960s with zest, working on Bella Abzug's first congressional campaign, protesting the Vietnam War and becoming a driving force in both the Gay Activists Alliance and the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian rights organization. "We specialized in 'zaps' fun and imaginative political actions," McGovern wrote in a resume several years ago. "... We occupied the offices of Harper's magazine for a full day." McGovern, who most recently lived in Olivebridge, also wrote that she "drank alcoholically from 1962 until I joined AA in 1973. At that point, I stopped activism for a few years and didn't take it up again really until about 1982, when I moved to the Mid-Hudson. I started and spearheaded a number of groups." "Her causes were many but shared one focus: peace and justice," a line in her obituary reads. Friends remember McGovern saying her initial reason for moving upstate was to write, and write she did articles published in local newspapers and the Hudson Valley Black Press; hundreds of letters to opinion pages; countless fliers and media releases; and a 40-page, meticulously researched monograph that urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject the nomination of then-Ulster County District Attorney Michael Kavanagh to the federal bench. (The Democratic-controlled committee stalled the nomination, and Republican Kavanagh never secured the federal judgeship, but he later was elected to New York's state Supreme Court.) McGovern and Kavanagh were frequent adversaries. "He called me 'that woman from Gardiner,'" McGovern recalled, a reference to the Ulster County town where she lived at the time. She later squared off with Kavanagh's prosecutors six times in court appearances for protest graffiti McGovern had drawn on a Kingston sidewalk, but she was unfazed "I had a pro-bono lawyer, so it didn't cost me the money he thought it would," she once said. In her later years, as her health declined, McGovern did her work with a cane and then from a wheelchair. She fought a winning battle to make the New Paltz Town Court accessible, had a well-received play performed at BOCES in New Paltz and was the area media's go-to person for causes relating to reproductive rights and gay and lesbian youths, among others. In 2004, seven years before same-sex marriage became legal in New York state, McGovern was a vocal supporter of New Paltz Mayor Jason West for presiding over a "solemnization" ceremony for two dozen gay couples who wanted to wed. But she also aligned herself with non-controversial endeavors, such as a recent effort to save the Rosendale Theatre. McGovern's life is chronicled in the National Women's Hall of Fame's "Book of Lives and Legacies." McGovern was born to Arthur and Geraldine McGovern in Quincy, Mass., on Oct. 21, 1938. A memorial service is to be held in the next several weeks at a to-be-announced location in Ulster County.