Gale, who is retiring from the University of Oregon after 27 years in the classroom, took on those issues and more as a leader of the state’s fledgling environmental movement.

She helped found the Oregon Environmental Council (OEC) in 1968. By 1971, environmentalists had assumed an unprecedented role in the state legislature–dominated at the time by business, timber and farming interests. Gale was a citizen lobbyist for the OEC in 1969 and 1971 when much of the groundwork was laid for Oregon’s precedent-setting statewide land use planning program.

"We kind of slipped under the radar," she says. "The timber and business lobbyists discounted us and, as a result, we got some important bills through the session."

"There’s no question about it. Maradel gave environmentalists a voice in Oregon and a presence they had never had," says Nancie Fadeley, who chaired the House Environment and Land Use Committee during the landmark 1971 and 1973 sessions. The 1971 session produced the Oregon Bottle Bill and the Beach Bill and established funding for the state’s bicycle paths. The 1973 session passed the enabling legislation for statewide land use planning.

As land use planning gained momentum in Oregon, Gale focused her attention on the Oregon Coast. She and her coalition of environmental organizations persuaded Gov. McCall to appoint her and five other environmentalists to the Oregon Coastal Conservation and Development Commission (OCCDC). It was a bold move. At the time the OCCDC–made up of port commissioners, mayors and county commissioners–was focused on economic development, not environmental preservation.

"There was a fair amount of suspicion that this effort would be oppressive," says Dick Benner, current director of the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development.

"It was," says Gale, a terribly embattled environment. She recalls an editorial in a south coast newspaper that summed up the hostility.

"The editorial said that if I came to Coos County I’d be shot. If I came to Curry County, I’d be hung," she recalls. "No one shot at me, but some people did call me a communist."

Gale, known for her soft-spoken and reasonable approach to conflict, was able to parlay her position on the OCCDC to help define Oregon’s coastal planning policies.

"The preservation goals she fought for are still good public policy a generation later," Benner says.

Her experience in legislative committee rooms persuaded Gale she needed a law degree if she were to become truly effective. So she went back to school, earning her degree at the UO School of Law in 1974.

"I never wanted to practice law," she says, "but I did want to write good law."

UO President Dave Frohnmayer, a state legislator during Gale’s stint as a lobbyist, and a professor at the law school when she was there, says she was very focused on what she wanted to accomplish.

"She was a role model and an agenda setter during a period when Oregonians were becoming increasingly conscious of what was special about this state," Frohnmayer says.

Following graduation from law school, Gale became a lobbyist for the City of Eugene, spearheading an all-out assault on the practice of burning grass seed straw, which covered the city in acrid smoke every summer. The legislative effort didn’t get the practice banned, but did win reductions in acreage burned and a policy that decreed farmers wouldn’t be allowed to burn their fields unless prevailing winds blew the resulting smoke away from Eugene and Springfield into less populated areas to the east.

During this period, Gale was juggling two jobs–as a state lobbyist and an assistant professor of urban planning at the UO. It was time to decide which career to follow.

"The most important decision of my life was to become a full-time educator," she says. "I decided that, while I could accomplish a lot as a lobbyist, I could accomplish even more by teaching students how they can make a difference."

Gale has few regrets, but does worry that the environmental programs she championed 30 years ago are being eroded.

"The thing about being an environmentalist is that you can never go to bed and rest easy. Nothing is ever saved forever. The issues never go away," she says.

Gale will spend the summer packing up her books and papers before leaving for an extended vacation in Italy. As for the future–she isn’t sure. She may decide to live in Italy or the south of France–or she may return to her roots as a citizen activist in Oregon.

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