On August 1, Sierra Club Associate Representative Mary Wiper, 28,
was killed by lightning while hiking with friends in Breckenridge,
Colorado. Two others who were also struck regained consciousness,
but were unable to revive Mary.
“This accident is about as random as anything nature can
serve up,” says Club organizer Lawson LeGate of Salt Lake
City. “She’s going to leave a big space in our hearts
on a personal level, and she’ll leave a hole in our organization
that will be hard to fill.”
Mary grew up in the small farm town of Bowbells, North Dakota,
where she nurtured a deep love for the land. At the University of
North Dakota at Grand Forks, she worked to establish an Earth Day
celebration and a long-term recycling program on campus. After graduating
summa cum laude in 1999, she went to work for the Sierra Club in
South Dakota, gathering public comment on a national grasslands
management plan for the Dakotas.
That fall, Mary became a conservation organizer for the Club in
Billings, Montana. The centerpiece of her work was Weatherman Draw—also
known as the Valley of the Chiefs—on Montana’s high
plains, a place held sacred by Plains Indian tribes from Montana
to Oklahoma. Renowned for its 1,100-year-old rock art, it drew the
attention of the tribes and others because it was slated for oil
development.
“Mary nurtured a group of trouble-makers who were willing
to stand up for this place,” says Northern Plains Sierra Club
organizer Kathryn Hohmann. “She sustained our network by doing
the footwork, phone-banking, writing mailers, researching agency
decisions—everything from talking with national news outlets
to booking hotel rooms. Her work even took her to Washington, D.C.,
where members of Congress heard the intensity of our purpose.”
Mary employed her talents of media outreach and coalition-building
to bring together activists, local and national tribal members,
local and national legislators, geologists, attorneys, archeologists,
oil industry representatives, and BLM personnel. Ultimately, the
corporation holding the drilling lease dropped its plans and donated
its lease to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. No one
deserved more credit for the victory than Mary.
“She impressed everyone who knew her with her extraordinary
poise and her well-honed strategic sense,” says LeGate. “Her
gentle nature belied her fierce devotion to protecting our nation’s
environment.”
In May 2003, Mary was promoted and relocated to Albuquerque, where
she worked on the successful campaign to prevent coal mining in
Zuni Salt Lake, another sacred site, and joined the campaign to
protect Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico from natural gas development.
She was recently appointed to be the lead organizer in the Building
Environmental Communities program in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
“Mary was only in the state a short time and had already
made tremendous contributions to protecting New Mexico’s health
and environment,” says Jeanne Bassett of the New Mexico Public
Interest Research Group. “It’s an enormous loss to the
conservation community,” agrees Stephen Capra of the New Mexico
Wilderness Alliance.
Jennifer McKee, a Billings Gazette reporter when Mary was in Montana,
says Mary’s sunniness belied her strength. “At first,
one thought Mary’s sweetness would be quickly crushed by the
toxicity of environmental fights in the West. Mary proved them wrong.
She fought for the land she loved, but did not sacrifice her lightness
or her optimism to the cause. Mary was not a cynic. She graced her
friends and the land she cherished with all her gifts. She was infectious,
sincere, but above all, the sweetest person I have ever known.”
Mary is survived by her mother, Sandra, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa;
her father, Ray, of Bowbells, North Dakota; a sister, Ann Gerber,
of Los Angeles; and a brother, Robert, of Minneapolis.
Up to Top
|
