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.
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