Jane Morrison, at 70; battled to protect children, Savin Hill

JANE MORRISON

First, she marched against busing. Then, Jane Morrison did something that some opponents of court-ordered school desegregation saw as a betrayal: She advocated for safety amid upheaval.

"She called it 'doing bus stops,' " said Mary Ellen Smith of Walpole, whom Ms. Morrison married in 2004. "She would get up at the crack of dawn, before her own kids went to school, and would ride around to the bus stops and make sure that those parents who did have the courage to put their kids on buses in Southie were protected."

An activist who also had worked to preserve the character of her Savin Hill neighborhood when the University of Massachusetts built a campus nearby, Ms. Morrison used her fierce will and booming voice to ensure a modicum of tranquility during some of the city's bitterest neighborhood fights in the 1970s.

Having reluctantly moved away from Boston a few years ago as her health failed, Ms. Morrison was 70 and living in Walpole when she was taken to Kindred Hospital in Natick, where she died of respiratory failure on March 13.

"She was not scared of anyone," said William Rawn, a Boston architect and longtime friend who was an administrator at the UMass-Boston campus in the early 1970s when he began negotiating with Ms. Morrison. "I think she knew she was as smart as anyone at the university, and she didn't mind showing that. If you said something foolish, she would catch you on it immediately."

Said Smith: "You always knew what she thought. She didn't hold back."

In the 1980s, Ms. Morrison became an education and employment specialist for the state Department of Education and switched in 1991 to working for the city as project director for the Boston Against Drugs program.

A mother of four who had juggled neighborhood activism with household duties, Ms. Morrison participated in a program through Antioch University and received a master's degree in education in 1991. She retired in 2002.

Ms. Morrison had graduated from Dorchester High School and married Murray Margulis, with whom she had four children, living in the Savin Hill neighborhood where she had grown up.

The new UMass campus and the Globe's expanding presence nearby on Morrissey Boulevard introduced her to political activism as residents became concerned about encroachment. She began attending meetings and advocated for compromises aimed at keeping UMass-Boston students from overrunning Savin Hill. "I thought the state was going to build this monstrosity in my backyard," she told the Globe in 1994.

To keep the neighborhood intact, she negotiated with Rawn, who had been educated at Yale and Harvard Law School.

" 'Oh, Bill,' I used to say, 'you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. How'd you end up dealing with the rabble in Savin Hill?' But he really surprised us," Ms. Morrison told the Globe. "He was very sensitive, very ethical. He had to work real hard for us to develop trust in him. He needed to know that this was not a classroom, this was not just social engineering, this was our life."

Rawn said two key proposals emerged from his meetings with Ms. Morrison and other activists: a shuttle bus would ferry students between the campus and the nearby T stop, and the university would not allow Dorchester residents to list apartment openings in the school's housing office. Those agreements, he said, largely spared Savin Hill from becoming a bedroom community for students.

"The stability of Savin Hill in the last 30 years is in significant part due to Jane's work," he said.

Busing was more problematic. Ms. Morrison initially joined neighbors in demonstrating against the court order but decided that for the safety of her children and others she would help make it work. "I just thought it was inevitable," she told the Boston Phoenix in 1975 of her efforts to ensure that children could travel safely to and from school.

Just as inevitable was the response. Angered by her compromise, some busing opponents threw rocks through the windows of the family's house, Smith said.

The two met when Smith asked her to work with the Citywide Educational Coalition, a parents group, though she added "Jane never really had a boss. I used to introduce myself as the person who thought she was Jane's boss. Jane did things her way. She was a very smart woman."

Ms. Morrison's marriage ended as she became more involved as an activist, and she and Smith became a couple. They held a commitment ceremony years ago, long before state laws changed and allowed them to marry.

"She was an earth mother to a lot of people," Smith said. "She'd give people advice. Many times it was solicited, sometimes it wasn't."

In addition to Smith, Ms. Morrison leaves two sons, Mark of Lowell and Neal of Portland, Maine; two daughters, Amy DiClemente of Norwood and Longwood, Fla., and Penny Smith of Framingham; a brother, Paul of Popponesset; and seven grandchildren.

A funeral Mass will be said at 10 a.m. today in Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta Church in Dorchester. Burial will be private.