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Liz Sewell was a guiding light for CNVC throughout her lifetime. Her extraordinary way of thinking made a lasting impact on the movement to end violence. She brought non-violent communication to CNVC as a way of life and daily practice. She was a firebrand when it was a very unpopular way for women to be. She spoke to my soul. She taught me to have a voice and my opinion is not up for discussion. Last week, she flew from her body to parts unknown. I will dearly miss her. A part of her is woven into the fibers of the fabric that make up CNVC and our community.
— Laura Sunday, CNVC Co-Director
Excerpt from The Union Democrat:
Elizabeth “Liz” Sewell, a founding sister of the forerunning organization to the Center for a Non Violent Community, died Aug. 12 at Stanford Medical Center in Palo Alto from a struggle with aneurysms at age 73.
“Every part of what she believed in, it’s not just woven into the fabric of our agency, it’s in every single fiber,” said Laura Sunday, co-director at CNVC.
Her family and friends — of which there were many — described Sewell as a firebrand visionary for women’s rights and a passionate advocate for social justice. She remained on the CNVC board until her death, and during her 50 years in Sonora, she campaigned tirelessly to improve the status of the battered and unfortunate.
“She was just a huge light for everyone. I’ll miss her,” said her younger sister, Fran Darling. “She was the best friend I ever had.”
Sewell, Pat Cervelli, Linda DuTemple and Darlene Baumgarten (pictured as left) are considered the founding sisters of CNVC and the mothers of a regional women’s rights movement which earned legitimacy, recognition and funding under their stead.
The group founded the Mother Lode Women’s Crisis Center over a few years in the late 1970s, soon after opening a shelter and establishing a sexual assault support program. They pioneered school programs and changed the name to the Mother Lode Women’s Center in the mid-1980s after leasing a house as a shelter for $1 a year from the City of Sonora.
After a brief closure, it was re-incorporated as the Mountain Women’s Resource Center and later as CNVC.
Sewell was integrated with the center’s programs through all the changes and fluctuations, and is credited by the organization for facilitating last year’s purchase of The Guardian House, or CNVC’s emergency shelter.
Her friends said she was equally passionate about expressing her views as she was empathetic when listening to others.
Founding sister Linda DuTemple said she first met Sewell when the Mother Lode Women’s Center was just getting off the ground in 1979. At the time, they and the others were involved with writing grants, gaining non-profit status and continuing to provide services to local women.
Sewell set herself apart as an influential leader, Linda DuTemple said, fostering a professional friendship with her brother, then-District Attorney Eric DuTemple, when there was still some institutional law enforcement concern about what their nascent organization intended to do.
“They didn’t have any protocol for domestic violence or sexual assault cases at the time,” Linda DuTemple said. “They thought there would be meddling.”
But Sewell now had the ear of the “top-cop” in the county.
“They became sort of a team. She just knew how to talk to him so he would listen. He heard her and he liked her and he trusted her,” Linda DuTemple said. “He heard things from outsiders that he wouldn’t hear from his sister.”
Sunday was hired almost 20 years ago at the Mountain Women’s Resource Center as a children’s program manager by Sewell, who very quickly developed into a mentor.
“When I came here, I thought I knew everything. When I met her I was in awe of everything I didn’t know,” Sunday said. “She taught me about oppression, feminism and compassion … she was a guiding light for me around the time I’ve known her.”
Linda Thorpe was a teaching assistant at Columbia College in the mid-1970s when she met Sewell, then an adult sociology student.
“I was greatly impressed. She was clearly a thinker. It was mutual admiration intellectually and we became friends, and we’ve been friends for 40 years,” Thorpe said.
Like others, their friendship blossomed through interwoven campaigns with social justice and the women’s movement.
“We had a really strong group of women who are like minded in fun and politics alike. It was a remarkable thing, and she will be sorely missed,” Thorpe said.
Beetle Barbour was another longtime friend who met Sewell through the women’s center. In the following years, they solidified their relationship through cooperative projects while Barbour worked at the Amador-Tuolumne Community Action Agency.
“I really loved her. She was involved in almost every endeavor I was in. She was a wonderful resource, and she really loved being alive,” Barbour said.
Ten years ago, Sewell was trimming fruit trees when she developed an unbearable headache. She was medi-flighted from Adventist Health Sonora to Doctor’s Medical Center in Modesto, where they discovered an aortic aneurysm. She had a stroke during surgery and fell into a coma for 10 days.
Sewell’s family and friends didn’t believe she would make it.
They took her off life support, and one of her sisters read the Psalm 23, preparing for her death. Then someone noticed she was suddenly awake and mouthing the words to the psalm.
“They said they were absolutely astounded when they took her off it,” Barbour said. “She was among us again.”
Sewell was a Buddhist and helped form the local “Zen Sangha” group, a spiritual community for meditation and reflection.
Linda DuTemple said she was a “great chef, a quick-witted humorist and loved to play pinochle.”
Many described Sewell as sharp, intelligent and sagacious, while still light-hearted, all the way through the end of her life.
Sewell grew up in Lemon Grove, a small city in San Diego County. She graduated from Mount Miguel High School and later moved to San Francisco, where she met her longtime partner, Jeannie Pape.
In the late 1960s, Sewell and Pape moved to Sonora.
Sewell is survived by her siblings Darling, Katie Brien and Adam Sewell.
Please consider making a donation in honor of Liz’s passing to support her life’s work: Donate.
