Thanks, Anne!

Anne Woiwode

Anne Woiwode looks like the stereotypical tree-hugger. With her Birkenstocks, minimal makeup and sometimes braided, sometimes pony-tailed hair that reaches her waist, she can easily be imagined participating in a sit-in at UC Berkeley or swaying to the music of Joan Baez at Max Yasgur’s farm in upstate New York.

But appearances can indeed deceive. Anne is no one-dimensional flower child.  She’s a skilled and dedicated environmental advocate who’s spent more than three decades protecting public and environmental health in Michigan and beyond. Modesty prevents her from trumpeting her contributions and awards – the latest of which is being named a 2012 Michigan Green Leader by the Detroit Free Press – so I’ll do it for her.

Anne started volunteering for the Sierra Club’s Mackinac Chapter back in 1980, when I was a senior in high school. At around the same time, she and the Sierra Club helped form the nonprofit Michigan Environmental Council to serve as the voice of the state’s environmental community in Lansing. She joined the Sierra Club staff five years later, becoming Conservation Coordinator, and has been advocating for Michigan’s unparalleled natural resources ever since. (She now directs the chapter.)

She’s worked to shut down concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and coal-fired power plants, protect the Great Lakes, ensure safe drinking water, combat sprawl, preserve our wetlands and forests and fight short-sighted bureaucrats and politicians, among other efforts, always with quiet strength, impressive intelligence and her trademark shy smile.

I’ve seen Anne in action. (I worked for the Michigan Environmental Council from 1995 to 2006.) I’ve been in more meetings with her than I can count. I’ve been to the home she shares with her husband, Tom, in a Lansing suburb and checked out her amazing rooftop garden. We’ve traveled to conferences together and discussed legislative campaigns and corporate greed and the need to educate the public about what’s going on. And I’ve often thought, “I bet her family members are proud to be related to her.” I’m sure proud to have worked with her.

Even when her organization experienced controversy – including allegations that it accepted funding from the wrong sources and was too involved with contentious immigration and population issues – Anne managed to stay above the fray, keeping her nose to the grindstone and her eyes on the prize.

Sierra Club photo

There are some people who make one or two big splashes and become renowned and revered. Others, like Anne, devote decades to a mission, work tirelessly and endlessly for small gains that add up, and leave their mark not in one fell swoop but by touching the lives of thousands, one person at a time, and making the world a better place in the process.

I don’t think of Anne Woiwode as a state environmental leader who speaks softly and carries a big stick, although she is and does. I don’t think of her as a committed public servant (she’s a former Meridian Township Trustee) or lobbyist or political operative or tactician or teacher or mentor, although she wears all of these hats. When I think of Anne, I think of a wise and charming woman who enhanced my quality of life by being in it.

Thanks, Anne, and congratulations on this much-deserved accolade from the Freep!