The Albuquerque-based nonprofit Silver Horizons this week honors Compassion & Choices activist Carol Tucker Trelease with induction into its Hall of Fame. Carol is head of our executive council in New Mexico, leading the public education campaign to protect aid in dying there.
The Albuquerque Journal reports:
This year’s inductees into the Silver Horizons Senior Hall of Fame include people who have made invaluable contributions to aviation and tourism, athletics and sports, arts and culture and health care and social justice.
Despite their diversity of interests, they share a lifetime commitment to community service and philanthropy. All will have their portraits added to the Senior Hall of Fame gallery in the Convention Center, bringing to 117 the number of people honored in the past 30 years.
In addition, they will be celebrated at a Thursday fundraising dinner and silent auction to benefit the nonprofit Silver Horizons, which provides programs to help low-income seniors and seniors in crisis, and serves as an independent auxiliary organization to the city Department of Senior Affairs.
Working on behalf of health care for women and issues related to social justice have been integral to Carol Tucker Trelease. For 23 years, she worked in a variety of positions for Planned Parenthood, eventually serving as its executive director/CEO for 18 years. In 1999 she was presented the Margaret Sanger Award.
Trelease has been active with the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John Church, where she served on the vestry, volunteers as a reader and usher and works in the pantry and the thrift store.
She is or has been on the boards of the League of Women Voters; Compassion and Choices, which promotes end-of-life policy issues; the ARCA Foundation in support of more than 600 developmentally disabled children and adults; La Vida Llena Full Life Foundation to provide help and resources for residents of that senior community; and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. She was also a longtime Rotary Club member.
Trelease regularly hosts political fund raisers. She is a former Democratic Party Outstanding Woman of New Mexico as well as a former recipient of the YWCA Women on the Move Award.
“It seems crazy to be acknowledged for doing the things I love to do and that I would be doing anyway,” she says. “But I’m certainly grateful and honored, even if I don’t feel old enough to be a senior Hall of Famer. I’m just 69. A kid!”
Congratulations, Carol!
Read the full article here.