By Bob Gibson

Mary Ann Elwood had a laugh that filled a room.

The diminuitive grand dame of Charlottesville politics for 40 years was a leader who promoted others.

The daughter of an Indiana Republican industrialist, she was guided by a fierce sense of social justice.

When she died peacefully in her sleep at home on Sept. 12, her life and laugh slipped away after five decades of work as a civil rights activist, educator, lay church leader and party organizer.

It’s fair to say that Elwood, together with Mitchell Van Yahres, Grace Tinsley, Drewary Brown, Henry Mitchell and a band of civic and political activists, transformed the city into a Democratic Party enclave.

The University of Virginia played a major role in that transition, and Mary Ann and husband Bill Elwood became a town-gown power couple who knew and liked players on either side of town.

Each devoted a lifetime to pursuing racial progress and educational opportunity.

Each brought gifts of intellect and street smarts into a community in 1964 that was starkly segregated by race and class.

The Elwoods and three university presidents formed teams that very quietly tore down old racial and class barriers. Bill Elwood was a natural social healer who became an early and successful recruiter of black talent to UVA’s clasrooms.

“We came here in 1964 for him to teach English,“ she said nine years ago shortly before her husband died. “When we got here, everything was segregated and we made the decision we would not have anything to do with something that was segregated.“

They taught their two boys that not swimming was better than joining a segregated club or pool.

The couple from Northwestern University and greater Chicago went out of their way to mentor black and white children in Charlottesville.

Charlottesville’s growth as a community in which people of all races work and study together was aided immeasureably by her efforts.

“She was great at getting people together. She had a knack for that,“ said Mariflo Stephens, a writer, teacher and former reporter who met Elwood in the early 1970s.

“Everyone knew her. I was kind of intimidated by her, but by the time you got to know her you found out she was very warm,“ Stephens said.  “She was definitely a force of nature.“

Mary Ann Elwood was distressed that children were graduating from elementary school without learning to read. She saw that one-on-one tutoring taught children in her home and could work in any setting.

She organized a free kindergarten program and, later, a Book Buddies Program that linked together up to 160 volunteers a year with first graders who could use help learning to read.

“She certainly had a big impact on my life as well as a lot of people’s lives in this community,“ said Marcia Invernezzi, a professor of education at UVA’s Curry School who co-founded Book Buddies with her.

Elwood believed that success in reading by the end of first grade was invaluable in opening doors and preventing future failure.

Mary Ann Elwood’s passion for politics led her to organize people to vote. She succeeded in uniting black voters and white liberals and moderates into a highly organized majority in city elections.

“She had real friends, not just allies,“ said friend Virginia Germino. With a raucous sense of humor and righteous anger at racial injustice, “She brought people together,“ Germino said.

But with her background she was also a good fit as the first female president and CEO of the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, said current chamber president Tim Hulbert.

“She was a superstar,“ Hulbert said. “She and Bill were superstars.“

She was admired by former UVA President John T. Casteen III, who praised “her capacity to criticize in ways that enlightened rather than antagonized, and to express affection and respect in words that also corrected and taught.  She and Bill addressed the world as it was, imagined a world that acknowledged its past but also built new futures.  Mary Ann lived her life with elegant honesty.  Few do that.  But she did, and because of that the parts of the world that she touched are better places.“

Charlottesville found inspiration in her leadership, and sense of justice, and is a more integrated community thanks to her.