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MERSON -- The Rev. Alan Merson passed away peacefully on Bainbridge Island, WA on Tuesday, October 4, 2005 after a battle with cancer. He was born February 7, 1934, in Brooklyn, NY, and graduated from Harvard University in 1952 with a degree in political science. After serving in the U.S. Navy, he graduated from Harvard Law School and practiced law in Anchorage and Cordova, Alaska. While in Alaska in the 1960s, he flew his airplane to remote areas and founded a legal services program for the poor, mostly native Alaskans. He took a year off to study theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, before returning to represent the poor in Alaska. He left Alaska in 1968 to teach poverty law at the University of Denver's law school. He took a two-year leave from teaching to be the head of the six-state Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He returned to teaching in Denver and defeated Wayne Aspinal in a primary political race for the senate in 1972, but lost in the general election. He moved to San Juan County in Puget Sound, WA in 1980 to represent the county to challenge the proposed construction of a 26-mile oil pipeline on the bottom of Puget Sound. While in Washington, he worked to establish the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area and taught at the University of Washington in the environmental studies program. He moved to Durango, CO in the 1980s to assist farmers facing bankruptcy and he later worked in Santa Fe, NM in the Attorney General's Office on land fraud cases. He was the county prosecutor in Estancia, NM for a few years and had an unsuccessful campaign for congress in New Mexico in the late 1980s. He returned to Washington and private practice in Port Angeles and moved to Seattle in 1996 to resume theological studies at Seattle University. He graduated with a master's degree in pastoral studies and was ordained by the Kittitas Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in 1998. In 2001, after having a stem cell transplant to fight bone cancer, he went on a 250-mile walk that took two weeks from the Canadian border in British Columbia to Oregon to draw public attention to the nation's crisis in health care coverage. His goal on the walk was to create awareness about the health care crisis with everyone he met along the way. He felt that he was alive only because he had ready access to health care, and that health care should be a right, not a privilege. For the last few years, he was a popular speaker at Unitarian churches in Canada, Washington, and Oregon. He was a political activist, working on environmental issues and other issues and other issues affecting the less fortunate. He had a vision of a better world and pursued that vision without compromise throughout his life. He was also writing a book, a collection of his Unitarian Church talks, which will be published posthumously. His brother, Jay Merson of San Diego, CA; a daughter, Carrie Merson of Seattle; and son, David Merson of Denver, CO survive him. There will be no services. Memorial contributions may be made to Group Health Hospice, Group Health Community Foundation, Dept 4194, PO Box 34936, Seattle, WA 98124-9924, or to a charity of the donor's choice.
        Published on: Sun October 16, 2005