Billie Rose Lawrence, 'one-woman army' and activist

Beacon Hill activist Billie Rose Lawrence spent years battling Suffolk University's expansion projects. She confronted construction crews over early morning jackhammers and fought for her neighbors' interests before licensing boards for 25 years.

"If she saw or read anything and thought, 'I can help these people,' she was on it," said her daughter Stephanie Lind. "She wasn't afraid to go to whatever lengths were necessary. She was a one-woman army."

Ms. Lawrence, who helped found the Upper Beacon Hill Civic Association, died of lung cancer on Nov. 26 at the Kaplan Family Hospice House in Danvers. She was 74.

A former teacher in the Cincinnati public schools, Ms. Lawrence was known for blunt talk, delivered in a slight twang born of her West Virginia and Kentucky roots, where she spent part of her childhood on her stepfather's tobacco farm, her family said.

"She was a fighter, often with a loud bark and sometimes a painful bite, but always with a heart of gold and the best interests of her neighbors in mind," said John Nucci, a former Boston City Council member who became vice president for external affairs at Suffolk University in 2005.

She wore Cartier jewelry and smoked Dunhill cigarettes. In winter, Ms. Lawrence often wore a mink coat over sweatpants and ended her day at the bar at the steakhouse Mooo, sipping a martini alongside a cup of black coffee, according to her daughter.

"She didn't have a lot, but what she had was always the best," said Lind, who lives in a suburb of Cincinnati.

Mooo, located inside the XV Beacon Hotel, recently named a cocktail in her honor. The Billie Lawrence martini contains ice-cold gin and is shaken 50 times. A memorial service for Ms. Lawrence was held at Mooo last month.

Ms. Lawrence moved to Boston in the early 1980s in search of treatment at MassGeneral Hospital for a heart condition, her family said. She went to work as an assistant at the Massachusetts Teachers Association in 1982 and remained until her death.

"Billie was a very unique and a special person," Anne Wass, MTA's president, said in a statement. "She touched many lives at MTA. She always brought humor and a colorful flair to MTA. She will be deeply missed."

Born Billie Rose Lambert in Huntington, W.Va., she moved with her family to Erlanger, Ky., when she was a young girl. She graduated from Lloyd High School in Erlanger.

She earned a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Cincinnati and took graduate courses. In the 1950s, she starred as Miss Nancy Lee of "Jellybean Acres" on a children's educational television show on WKRC in Cincinnati. She was the first president of the Junior Board for Crippled Children of Northern Kentucky.

She taught English to elementary school students in Cincinnati's inner city in the 1960s.

After several of her students were arrested for theft, she led the class in publishing a cookbook of Appalachian recipes, seeking to teach her pupils how to become honest entrepreneurs, according to her family. She used her connections in Cincinnati's social circles to market the cookbook and the students kept the money, her daughter said.

She married and divorced twice. Later in life, she took the last name Lawrence, which was the maiden name of her mother, Geneva Points, her family said.

In Boston, Ms. Lawrence was a member of the Women's City Club of Boston and the Boston Athenaeum.

She had a fierce sense of justice, according to her son Jay Savely, of Andover.

He recalled driving with his mother once when she noticed a group of young men abusing a pigeon. She demanded he stop the car so she could confront them.

"She said, 'I'm going to stop them.' She hopped out and went running over there. That was the way she was. She wouldn't stand by and idly watch anything," he said.

Ms. Lawrence also loved to throw parties. Each spring she threw an exclusive Kentucky Derby party, with mint juleps served in pewter cups and ham flown up from the Bluegrass State.

In photos of her last race-day party, held at the Harvard Club last year, Ms. Lawrence wore pearls and a wide-brim straw hat decorated with roses. Guests picked their horse from an array of photos she displayed.

Friends also recalled a polo party Ms. Lawrence threw in Hamilton at which guests were ordered to work a stint on the hand crank of an old-fashioned ice cream machine, to earn their dessert.

She was diagnosed with lung cancer a few weeks before her death.

Although her health was failing, she insisted on throwing an Election Night bash at a local hotel. Guests ate chicken wings, in homage to the left and right wings of politics, her son said.

"She was a lot of fun. She just always had a blast," Savely said.

In planning for her death, Ms. Lawrence considered donating her body to science. "I told her, 'I don't think they're going to want it,' " her son said. "So then she wanted me to smuggle her into Fenway Park, but they had just traded Coco Crisp, so she said, 'The hell with them, too.' "

In addition to her son and daughter, Ms. Lawrence leaves two other daughters, Sandra (Shane) Nickell of Barbourville, Ky., and Suzanne (Dacre) Hancock of Wakefield; a brother, Leslie Lambert, of Erlanger, Ky.; two sisters, Judith (Thomas) Hodge of Florence, Ky., and Donna (Arnold) Lively of Cocoa Beach, Fla.; and eight grandchildren.

Burial is private.