Michael Helquist
  • Home
  • Memoir
  • Equi bio
    • MARIE EQUI in the Classroom
    • Writing History >
      • WWI Sedition in Oregon
      • Reproductive Justice
      • Oregon History
  • Change Your Day
  • Events
  • Contact

Change Your Day

A revitalized blog with one mission: to present a moment that jolts your day, triggers new thinking, gets you through traffic tangles, and relieves job stress. Or, more prosaically, accompanies you through the early miles of bike touring through France and Italy. Wherever you are, I aim to change your day.

Credit to @illuminatethearts for lighting the skies from the Ferry Building down Market Street. 

On this day: Marie Equi Dies, July 13, 1952

7/13/2015

 
Picture
On this day in 1952 the notorious and courageous firebrand Dr. Marie Equi died of renal disease at the age of 80 in a nursing home outside Portland, Oregon. Two years earlier she had fallen at home and fractured a hip. She never recovered, partly because she refused surgery and thus never benefited from physical therapy.

The next morning a cortege left a funeral home in downtown Portland and proceeded a few blocks to St. Michael the Archangel Church. The church served the city’s Italian and immigrant community of working people who were so important to Equi. Although Equi objected to many Catholic tenets, she believed it was important to die “in the church,” she had told a friend, because it offered “such wonderful hope.”

Picture
Equi was eulogized in the newspapers in Portland, and her obituary appeared in the New York Times. Former Oregon Governor Oswald West, a sometime adversary of Equi, remarked upon hearing of her death, “She was a radical but she had a heart as big as a watermelon.”

After more than ten years of research and writing the life story of the remarkable Marie Equi, I am immensely pleased that her full-length biography will be released in two months. 

MARIE EQUI, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passion available from the publisher, independent bookstores, and online September 15, 2015. 

Picture

    Michael Helquist

    Author Historian Activist 

    Archives

    June 2024
    May 2024
    October 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    March 2019
    June 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015

    RSS Feed

Website by Dale Danley 
Photography by Michael Helquist unless otherwise noted
© Copyright Michael Helquist

Proudly powered by Weebly