Sheila Galland; activist helped refuseniks

Even amid her struggles with ovarian cancer, Sheila Galland continued to body-surf.

While watching a presentation in 1982 about refuseniks, the Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate and then persecuted for wanting to leave, Sheila Galland decided she had to lend assistance.

"She saw all this in a slide show," said her husband, Peter of Acton, "and she immediately jumped up and said, 'How can I help?' "

As a liaison to lawmakers on Beacon Hill and in Washington, D.C., she spent more than two decades working to get aid to Jews in the Soviet Union, before and after the fall of communism. Mrs. Galland, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in February 2004 and helped educate others about the disease, died Nov. 5 in the Tippett Home hospice in Needham. She was 67 and lived in Acton.

"She did a lot of good things," said Judy Patkin, executive director of Action for Post-Soviet Jewry, based in Waltham. "Sheila came to us as a volunteer and later became staff. We have a lot of volunteers who only show up a few times, but Sheila was steady. She was always a good people person. She liked getting on the phone and connecting with people, and that was important to what we were doing."

Along with getting Congress and the Massachusetts Legislature involved with the cause, Mrs. Galland made several trips herself to the Soviet Union during years when helping refuseniks was dangerous.

"Once when she was in a hotel, there were people constantly pacing outside her door at 3 in the morning," her husband said. "She knew she was being watched."

Bringing assistance to refuseniks sometimes meant that Mrs. Galland and the others who visited would pack extra pairs of blue jeans, "which could be sold on the black market for significant revenue," he said. "They would bring them as their own wardrobes."

Born in Revere, Sheila Edwards moved with her family to Brookline when she was 7. The ancestors of both her parents had immigrated from Russia.

While attending Brookline High School, from which she graduated in 1959, she met Peter Galland. They began dating the summer after graduating, then went their separate ways, she to Antioch College in Ohio, he to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An art major, she spent 18 months studying in Paris and returned to Brookline before finishing at Antioch.

"Somebody told me she was home, so I looked her up at that point," her husband said.

She graduated from Antioch in 1964 with a degree in art, and they married the following year.

The Gallands moved to Philadelphia, where she taught elementary school and their first daughter was born. Less than four years later, they were back in Massachusetts, settling after a few months in Acton.

Soon after, she joined a local racial equality organization, then saw a newspaper advertisement for the Fresh Air Fund. Mrs. Galland opened the family's home to a visitor from the Bronx in New York City, who spent two weeks with the Gallands every summer for 14 years.

After seeing the presentation on refuseniks at a synagogue in 1982, Mrs. Galland turned her main activist focus to what was then called Action for Soviet Jewry. The name changed after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the organization now works primarily to get humanitarian aid to elderly Jews who have remained in the former Soviet states.

On one trip in the 1980s to visit refuseniks in the Soviet Union, Mrs. Galland traveled with Leonard Zakim, the civil rights activist who died in 1999. But no matter who went, the trips always had an element of intrigue and the possibility that Soviet authorities were checking to see what they were doing.

"It was important to organize all the lists of people who were in trouble and needed help, and they wrote addresses in crossword puzzles," her husband said. "They would fill in the squares with names and information that didn't look like what it really was."

When Mrs. Galland was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, she began speaking publicly about the disease, whose symptoms often go unnoticed for so long that treatment options narrow as the cancer spreads. Learning that she had a gene that had increased her cancer chances, she encouraged others to get tested so that future generations can know their options before the disease strikes.

But even amid illness and participating in clinical trials to extend her life, Mrs. Galland continued to ski, and body-surf near the family's summer home in Orleans. She also added yet another line to her résumé of helping others. During her final year alive, she took a course so that she could teach English as a second language.

One student was unable to travel to lessons. Undaunted, Mrs. Galland "ended up driving to the woman's house," her husband said, "and there she taught her to improve her English."

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Galland leaves two daughters, Pamela Dent of Atlanta and Sasha Affleck of North Quincy; three grandsons; and a granddaughter.

A service has been held.