Passages

Barbara Morel
The oldest of two daughters born to an elementary schoolteacher and a home builder,Barbara grew up in Los Angeles in the days when their Carthay Center home, built by her father, was on the outskirts. It was a safe and loving home and the exuberant atmosphere of the '20's nurtured an optimistic, warm, and exuberant personality. She walked through Hancock Park, past the La Brea Tar Pits, on her way to and from John Burroughs Middle School.
She graduated from Beverly Hills High School when she was 15, and started Scripps College at 16 during the Great Depression. Responding to the inequities and suffering of that era, classmates and professors engaged her in a lifelong interest in and active devotion to progressive political causes, so that in later years, when the scope of progressive politics came to include working to protect the natural environment, she had a running start of several decades.
After graduating from Scripps, she accompanied a classmate to France, and lived and worked there for four years, returning only when World War II forced an early return home. She married a merchant marine officer who'd recently returned from service in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, and they moved to Mexico for a time.
They returned to Los Angeles to join the war effort and raise a family. She bore three sons, whom she introduced to the wonders of Yosemite National Park and the High Sierra at early ages--as early as two years old. She studied for a teaching credential, and worked diligently as an elementary school teacher in the Compton City schools.
She studied for a master's degree at USC so that she could work as a remedial reading specialist and as a Spanish-English bilingual resource person. She was an avid camper, hiker, and backpacker during summer vacations, in the High Sierra, and in the mountains
of Europe and Japan. She hiked the John Muir trail, climbed Mount Whitney four times, climbed the four highest peaks in Japan, and once bivouacked in the Swiss Alps. She climbed Mount Hoffman in 1995, and North Dome in 2000.
She also loved travel abroad, folk dancing, singing, swimming, and reading. She was fluent in French and Spanish, and knew many songs in those languages, and many in Russian and Japanese. She was as active and engaged as she could be every day of her life. She made many excellent friendships, and dearly loved and was dearly loved by her family.

Jill Swift

Prominent environmentalist Jill Swift died on May 19, 2008, after a long illness. She was 79. She founded the Santa Monica Mountains Task Force in 1972 and served as its Chair for many years. As a Sierra Club leader, Jill organized a series of hikes that brought thousands of people into the Santa Monica Mountains, and in so doing, built a constituency that would support natural resources, preserve the environment, and work toward acquiring more public parkland. Her efforts were a major force in gaining federal approval, in 1978, for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, now the largest urban park in the country.
Ever vigilant in protecting the mountains from urban sprawl, she continued to agitate to save more open space. Her leadership helped defeat an ill-advised plan to make scenic Mulholland Drive into a four-lane road through the Santa Monica Mountains, which would have spawned large housing developments. With other activists, she successfully fought ill-advised plans to extend Reseda Blvd. from the San Fernando Valley to the Sea. Over the years, she continued to plan and lead hikes and was able to share with other hikers her vast knowledge of plants and wildflowers.
Her sister, Wendy Averill, said recently, Jill was such a special woman and gave so much in so many different areas. She was a real joy. Her family and friends planned a memorial walk in her honor that was to held on June 22nd in her beloved Caballero Canyon, the trailhead from which Jill had led so many hikes. Survivors include her three daughters and two grandchildren.