Cathy Garbini, women's rights activist from Denver, dies at age 61

Cathy Garbini, who for decades worked for women's rights, including reproductive rights, died Feb. 13. She was 61.

Garbini had been suffering from ovarian cancer and died at her Denver home, where she had been under hospice care.

A private service will be held today. Friends may call the family home for information.

"She was a small powerhouse who was always there," said former Colorado first lady Dottie Lamm. "She spoke passionately, buoyed up proponents and button-holed legislators."

Her daughter Florence Garbini, an airline pilot, said her mother "never believed in preconceived ideas about what women can and cannot do."

Florence Garbini and her husband, Andrew Allen, will wear purple shirts to the gathering today. Purple is often associated with the women's rights movement.

Cathy Garbini received awards for her work from the Colorado and national chapters of the National Organization for Women.

She had worked hard on the ERA Bill, which Congress passed in 1972 but failed to garner the required two-thirds of the states' approval. After that, she turned to local political campaigning.

Garbini worked for several women's campaigns, marching, speaking to crowds, stuffing envelopes and canvassing neighborhoods for Lamm, when she ran for U.S. Senate in 1998; for Josie Heath, who ran for the Senate in 1990 and 1992; for U.S. Rep. Pat Schroeder, who served from 1972 to 1996; and for current U.S. Rep. Dianna DeGette, D-Colo.

"She was a spitfire," said Sue Casey, a Denver city councilwoman from 1995 to 2001. "I trusted her political instincts about people."

Catherine Edna Paolino was born on Sept. 10, 1948, in Bangor, Maine, and was reared in Hampden, Va.

She earned a bachelor's degree in science from Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, Va., and a master's degree from the University of Maryland.

She worked as a biology researcher at Tufts University and Brandeis University, both in Massachusetts, and at the University of Colorado, said her husband, Alec Garbini.

She married Garbini on Aug. 10, 1970, and they moved to Colorado in 1976.

In addition to her husband and daughter, she is survived by another daughter, Adrienne Garbini of Brooklyn, N.Y.; her mother, Emily Paolino of Yorktown, Va.; and her sister, Babetta Akins of Atlanta.