When Laura Monroe, L’79, felt strongly about something, there wasn’t much anyone could do to stop her.

Her passion for civil liberties and social and economic justice led her to a lengthy career with the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1960s and 1970s.

In 1976, at age forty-nine, after three marriages and three children, she enrolled at Northeastern's School of Law.

And in the 1980s, working for Greater Boston Elderly Legal Services, she proved adept at helping elderly tenants hold on to their apartments during a wave of condo conversions. She also worked with then Boston mayor Raymond Flynn on rent control.

Says daughter Peggy Kocuibes, "My mother had always been a trailblazer."

Monroe slowed a bit—reluctantly—when her health started to fail ten years ago. She died in late November of a brain hemorrhage, at age seventy-seven.

But family, friends, and former colleagues agree: Even near the end, she approached life with gusto.

Monroe's early years greatly influenced her passionate pursuits, says Kocuibes. In the mid-1930s, when Monroe was a young child, her family fled Nazi Germany, taking refuge in France, Morocco, Brazil, and finally the United States.

"She understood what it was to be scared," says Kocuibes, "and what it was for people to reach out a hand and show the way."

Monroe attended public school in Cleveland and briefly studied at Case Western Reserve University. She left school to marry and became a mother at a young age. She also started volunteering for the local American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter.

In the mid-1960s, she became the chapter's executive director. She went on to hold high-level ACLU positions in Washington State and California.

After the death of her third husband, Eason Monroe, she moved back east to study law at Northeastern. Law school chums Howard Friedman, L'77, and Aura Garfunkel, L'80, say Monroe's ease with all kinds of people made her both a great friend and an effective advocate for the underserved.

"One of the gifts Laura had was that she could talk to anyone—to politicians, to millionaires, to poor tenants who had nothing, to security guards," says Friedman. "She held firm to her views, but she could speak to people who disagreed with her."

Monroe, he adds, "understood that she was not going to win every battle. But she never gave up."

Says Garfunkel, "Laura was committed to people's freedom—freedom that had to do with equality and dignity, with having a roof over your head and a meal on your table, and with a feeling that you mattered."

For her family, Monroe's passion translated into valuable life lessons.

"All her kids and her grandchildren grew up with an enormous sense of right and wrong, and that one person can make a difference," says Kocuibes. "That's an amazing thing."

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