01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, November 16, 2004

At yesterday's funeral for Nancy Gewirtz, a swath of brilliant natural light shone on the sanctuary of Temple Beth-El and kissed her coffin.

How appropriate. As an advocate for the poor and forgotten, this longtime Rhode Island College social work professor and State House presence was a swath of light that cut through the darkness of societal and governmental indifference.

She offered a voice and an optimism -- and a fierce determination that, as Jewish tradition has it, the world be repaired and justice prevail.

In his eulogy, Rabbi Leslie Y. Gutterman said it perfectly:

"She taught our hearts to hope and our hands to serve."

Gewirtz died Sunday at age 59 after a 3 1/2-year battle with cancer. She fought with surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, but her proudest weapon was a refusal to allow the disease to define her or to sideline her. She continued speaking out for her causes and savored her blessings. In a family newsletter to friends in late 2001, months after the onset of her cancer, her husband, Henry, wrote of their spending time at their Nantucket summer home. "She told me one day almost in a poem how peaceful and secure she felt by the ocean in the warmth of the sun, the sound of the ocean . . . and how she loved to see the seal which surfaced near the beach each day."

That same year, she wrote me, "I'm hanging in trying to live every day & stay optimistic." A month or two later, "I'll be glad when CHEMO is done in March. It really makes me fatigued -- but only my body -- not my mind!" She would garnish her notes by drawing funny faces. She had a good sense of humor and an easy way of talking -- she had endless stories about the great Boston Celtics teams -- but I never met anyone so intent upon improving the lot of others. She told me once, "I feel like sometimes there's this glass wall and I'm jumping up and down behind the glass wall and I'm trying to get people's attention."

At her funeral, the advocacy community was out in force. So were public officials, including Governor Carcieri, U.S. Representatives Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin, Mayor David Cicilline, and several legislators. That was fitting too: She spoke truth to power, even if the powerful sometimes ignored her or saw her as a troublemaker.

I loved it when, at a hearing, a lawmaker menacingly called it "kind of strange" that a parade of her students had all testified the same way. Could it be, he demanded, that they were influenced by her teachings in the classroom?

"I hope so!" Gewirtz chirped. Still, at a testimonial dinner at RIC, she boasted that she urged students to disagree with her and pledged better grades if they did. A video tribute said that many people see poverty in terms of data but that when Gewirtz speaks, you could hear poverty breathe. The dinner was on Nov. 14, 2002. Two years to the day later, she died.

I last saw her last month, at a downtown party marking the passing of the torch at the RIC Poverty Institute she led so long. Now Kate Brewster was aboard as executive director. Gewirtz spoke of the continuing struggle to make Rhode Island better for all. She quoted a favorite of hers, academician-author Howard Zinn, as saying, "We should not give up the game before it has been fully played. Life is a gamble but not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world."

Spend a little time today thinking of Nancy Gewirtz. Ask yourself what you are prepared to do to make Rhode Island a fairer and more just society.

She did what she could and left a magnificent legacy. But it will mean even more if it inspires you to pitch in.

M. Charles Bakst, The Journal's political columnist, can be reached by e-mail at mbakst [at] projo.com