Linda A. Mabry
April 30, 1952-April 4, 2007
Palo Alto, California
Linda A. Mabry, a writer, attorney and community activist, died April 4 in Palo Alto. She was 54.
Born April 30, 1952, she devoted her life to community involvement in public and private sectors and pursued writing, teaching others about living life with purpose, and advocating for justice and equality in racial issues and political causes.
She nurtured her friendships and enjoyed dancing, music, art, travel and being in nature, according to her husband of 16 years, Dieter Folta.
She lived an active life, enjoying their dogs, Kai and Dakota, despite battling pancreatic cancer for more than five years. She was a "truth seeker" in its truest meaning, Folta said. She wrote numerous articles that were published in trade journals, newspapers and magazines on justice and equality related to the dignity of the human person and her African-American heritage.
She was deeply serious about social issues, and as a successful African American woman "always tried to reach out to help people behind her," as well as speaking out against perceived injustices, Folta said. But despite her personal success, she became disillusioned due to frustrations of achieving and sustaining social progress.
Her most recent project was writing her unfinished memoir entitled, "Falling Up to Grace." In 2005 she was in residence at Hedgebrook, a retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island in Washington, where she was awarded the Hochstadt prize for her work-in-progress.
Mabry was born in New York and raised in Brussels, Belgium and Harlem. She excelled in anything she to which she devoted her attention, including academic pursuits at Mount Holyoke College and Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, graduating with a degree in international law from Georgetown University.
She was an attorney-adviser in the Office of Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State from 1978 to 1981. She then practiced law from 1981 to 1986 at Hogan & Hartson and Miller & Chevalier in Washington, D.C.
She moved to the Bay Area in 1986 and joined the San Francisco law firm of Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Robertson & Falk in 1987, and later became a partner in their corporate department. In 1993 she became associate professor at Stanford Law School, where she remained for five years teaching international business.
"She liked working with the students," Folta said. But she became increasingly concerned with a kind of subtle discrimination that she felt lingers pervasively and destructively in society. She said in 2000 that no one at Stanford or in Palo Alto "has ever called me the N-word. We're much too sophisticated for that. But it's worse; it makes you crazy. It's like fighting an invisible enemy."
In late 1998, she resigned from the law school to protest what she felt was discrimination against women and people of color, and joined others in a class-action complaint against Stanford for alleged discrimination.
Folta, who is white and confined to a wheelchair, said at a Human Relations Commission forum that people often assumed Mabry was his nursing attendant, despite her degrees from Ivy League schools.
Mabry also had a strong positive commitment to community-based, nonprofit organizations, including Project Read, an adult literacy project in East Palo Alto, and the Oakland-based Savage Jazz Dance Company, where she was a board member.
In 2003 she joined the Palo Alto Housing Corporation as below-market-rate housing administrator. She continued working despite her illness until March of this year.
Mabry also traveled extensively throughout Europe, Africa and Latin America. Folta said her energy and curiosity about life and people earned her friends wherever she went, and her smile and laugh were infectious.
In addition to her husband, Dieter Folta, and stepson, Olaf Folta, she is survived by her parents, Ralph and Gwendolyn Mabry; brothers, Ralph Jr. and William; sister, Marguerite; three nephews and three nieces.
Tags: arts/media, public service
