Shari Zimble, 49; fought for underdog as legal aid attorney

SHARI ZIMBLE

Shari Zimble believed in forging community relationships and fighting for underdogs.

"She was always committed to building community. She loved, we all loved, having people walk in the house all the time and join us for dinner," said her husband, Mark Paley of Cambridge. "She was someone who made friends and also kept friends."

Ms. Zimble, a legal aid attorney and human rights activist, died Thursday of cancer at home in Cambridge. She was 49.

She was born in Washington, D.C., and later moved with her family to Massachusetts. She graduated from Wellesley High School in 1977.

Born into a very political family, Ms. Zimble was conscious of social issues and was intrigued with the law and debating from a young age, said her sister, Lisa of Venice, Calif.

"She was always a social activist, and always had causes she threw herself behind," her sister said. "She always wanted to be a voice for people who didn't have a voice in the system."

Ms. Zimble graduated in 1981 from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where she received a bachelor of arts degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies and government. After college, she worked in New York City for a year, and traveled before she attended law school at the University of California at Los Angeles. She graduated in 1988.

While in law school, Ms. Zimble worked as an intern with the Penn Center, one of the first schools for African-Americans during the Civil War and now a multiservice community development organization based in South Carolina. She worked on land issues with the Gullah community - descendants of Civil War-era slaves whose land had been taken and redistributed by heir land laws in the 1970s and 1980s - in Hilton Head, S.C., said her husband. In an effort to stop the land redistribution, she rewrote an important land manual, "You Got Land," for the Penn Center. The manual is still used today.

"She rewrote this over 20 years ago, and it is the most used land manual," said Paley. "They considered it a gift she gave to the Gullah community."

During her internship, she met Paley, and they were married in 1992.

Ms. Zimble worked as a lawyer for Legal Assistance of Central Massachusetts in Worcester until 1998. She then worked for the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute in Boston, where she and a colleague, Ellen Hemley, created the Center for Legal Aid Education.

The center branched out on its own in 2006 and has become a nationwide organization. Ms. Zimble, the director of curriculum and training development, created curriculum for legal aid training, and taught classes throughout New England and online.

"She was beloved by the community of legal aide practitioners. People loved her," said Hemley, of Newton. "She wasn't just a technician - she put her whole heart and soul in it."

Ms. Zimble also worked in the Cambridge school district. When two Cambridge schools merged, creating the middle school King Open, Ms. Zimble created a gardening project called the Garden of Hopes and Dreams to help the children work together.

"She felt creating a garden would bring the two communities together. One was largely upper-middle class, and the other was largely immigrant Portuguese," said Paley. "She was instrumental in the Garden of Hopes and Dreams. [The kids] planted the bulbs in the front of the school. She would have the kids say their hopes and dreams and have them watch the flowers grow in the spring."

Friends and family of Ms. Zimble said she was always trying something new, and constantly started new projects, including traditions for her family.

"More recently she took up quilting and made photo quilts for people. She tried to do really personal gifts for people. She always made traditions for our family," said Paley. "She had a song for the kids she sang to them before she went to bed. On the 10th birthday of our kids, she wrote a book for them about the first 10 years."

In addition to her husband and sister, Ms. Zimble leaves a son and daughter, Davin and Risa Paley-Zimble, both of Cambridge; her parents, Patti and Ken of Boston; and a brother, Peter of Los Angeles.

Services have been held.