Former Rep. Young remembered for doing the right thing
Soon after Becky Young was elected to the state Assembly in 1984, Ruth Loomis walked into her office and asked if she could work there three days a week -- for free. She stayed with Young for most of the legislator's seven terms in the Assembly, as did aides Shirley Lake and Jon Peacock, who were on the payroll but also put in many hours of unpaid overtime.
"I considered it to be my volunteer work," says Lake of those extra hours. "She was fighting for the issues I believed in."
Young inspired such devotion because of her own dedication to the issues, adds Peacock, who is now research director at the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
"We'd talk strategy at times, but 95 percent of the time we talked substance and what we wanted to accomplish. It was always about what was right, not what was politically expedient."
Loomis, Lake and Peacock were among the hundreds of friends, family members and former colleagues who turned out Saturday for a memorial service for Young at the Pyle Center on the UW-Madison campus, where Young earned her law degree in 1983. She died Nov. 18 after a decade-long battle with cancer at age 74.
Hosted by Young's husband, Crawford Young, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and their four daughters, Eva, Louise, Estelle and Emily, the memorial featured remembrances by former Assembly Speaker Tom Loftus, U.S. Rep. Gwendolyn Moore, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, friend Debora Kennedy, daughter Louise, state Democratic Party Chair Joe Wineke, and Mary Lou Munts, who served as the Assembly representative for the 76th District right before Young.
The speakers recalled Young's tireless efforts to promote mass transit, improve services for women and families, and reform the criminal justice system. They also noted her lack of pretense and willingness to cross political lines to secure votes for her causes.
A staunch supporter of Madison Metro before green transportation alternatives were in vogue, Young took the bus nearly everywhere she needed to go or grabbed rides with others, often filling any downtime with reading.
Her friend, Debora Kennedy, recalled the morning Young was reading outside while waiting for a ride to work from a friend. A car pulled onto her street. Young got in, put on her seatbelt and only then looked up. "You're not Ellen," she said to the equally surprised driver, who noted that he had merely been turning his car around.
Young also taught her children to get around by bus at an early age, said daughter Louise Young. "As soon as the bus system developed, she bought us bus passes and showed us the route."
Though nerve-wracking at first, Louise said it was one of the ways her mother gave her daughters the confidence they needed to go out into the world. "She had this capacity to give people the tools they needed to be independent and accomplish things," said Louise.
One of the figures Young mentored outside of her household was Gwen Moore, whom she met when Moore joined the state Assembly in 1989.
Moore praised Young for her ability and willingness to tackle the nuts and bolts of policy work, and to take small steps when necessary.
"She was able to manage the incrementalism with which so many people are impatient."
Moore said Young also was good at identifying how policy decisions, whether they fell in the area of transportation or social services, affected marginalized groups. "Becky was able to connect the dots," she said.
Young grew up in a conservative household in Clairton, Pa., where her father was a mid-level steel executive, said Crawford Young. "The liberal and progressive principles that served as her moral compass had nothing to do with things she heard about at the dinner table when she was young," he said.
Becky Young attended the University of Michigan, as did her husband-to-be, but they didn't know each other well. Always a frugal sort, Young saved enough money from the annual $1,000 stipend her parents gave her for school to finance a post-college trip to Europe with friends. She decided to stay on in Morocco, landing two secretarial positions -- the only jobs available to women at the time.
On a visit to Morocco in 1956, Crawford looked Becky up, and a romance flourished. The two married, and by 1963 the couple was living in Madison.
Young soon became active with the League of Women Voters, through which she met a group of women pioneers active in public life and politics, including Midge Miller, Ruth Doyle, Virginia Hart, Mary Lou Munts and Mary Louise Symon. Young ran for the Dane County Board, winning a seat in 1970, the first of 12 elections she would win. She also served as state highway commissioner and deputy secretary of administration before serving two terms on the Madison School Board. She served seven terms in the state Legislature before retiring in 1999.
During her time in the Legislature, Young was one of the few lawmakers -- on either side of the aisle -- to oppose the push from then Gov. Tommy Thompson to radically alter the state's welfare program, arguing that W-2 was largely a punitive program that would do little to bring people out of poverty.
When the time came for a vote on the measure on the Senate floor, Young and her aides continued to feed Wineke, then a state senator, a slew of amendments she hoped would soften the more draconian effects of the program. They all failed, and the bill passed easily.
Wineke, nevertheless, took to heart one of the many things he said he learned from Young: "The wrong political vote usually meant you were on the right side of public policy."
File photo
Rebecca Young, shown here in 1997, served seven terms in the state Legislature before retiring in 1999.
