I was so sad to read that Alexandra Dawson died recently. After working alongside her here at CLF, I’m sure of one thing: she gave whatever illness took her away one hell of a fight. That’s just the kind of person she was.

I was lucky to have worked with Sandra during the formative stages of my legal career. I was a third year night student at Suffolk University Law School in 1977 and had just started volunteering full time at CLF that year. I hadn’t a clue what it meant to be a conservationist as a legal practice but fate landed me for the next two years at the knees of one of the all-time masters in New England: Sandra Dawson.  She came to work every day absolutely on fire with her commitment to the environment,public resources, and the law. I am not alone, either. Sandra influenced the lives of so many lawyers and conservationists that it is barely worth trying to generate a list. The legal services program she designed and directed at CLF from 1972 to 1979 may have been the only one of its kind in the country.  Her legal opinions – whether the topic was wetland protection, the law of public ways, the public trust doctrine, or conservation tax law – were definitive, practical, and clearly written so anyone with an interest could access and work to protect their conservation interests. I can’t imagine how many of the public spaces and wetlands that we take for granted today owe their survival to her fierce and unflinching advocacy.

Although she was surprisingly modest at a personal level, she was a giant as a lawyer. When I saw her last at the celebration of her 80^th birthday organized by the Kestrel Land Trust and MACC, her first action after a smile of recognition and a hug (amazing!) was to grill me on a “just ghastly” municipal development that she was fighting.

Her influence and spirit will continue to live on in me and the thousands of others in New England who she shaped and the people they, in turn, have shaped.  But, at least in my lifetime, there will never be another Sandra Dawson.

Thank you, Alexandra, from the bottom of my heart.