Lois Galgay told her mother she wanted to move to Maine when she was 7 years old after spending several happy summer at Goose Rocks Beach in Maine. She should waited until she was an adult, according to her family.
She waited, but in the end she did arrive in Maine in her 20s and rose to become the state’s most ardent supporter of women and children, her decades-long support just coming to an end when she passed away from cancer on October 30, 2023, at the age of 78. She received honors from Maine for her groundbreaking work on local murder, as well as membership in the Deborah Morton Society and the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame. She was respected by the judicial system, the state bar organization, and the police chiefs ‘relationship.
She was a head on the national level, though. After her passing, the title appeared in Ms. Magazine: “Sleep in Power: Lois Galgay Reckitt, Trailblazing Feminist Activist.”
Lois Reckitt has not only been an inspirational head for women and girls in Maine, but even nationally, according to Eleanor Smeal, an advocate since the 1970s who was once referred to as one of the most influential women in America. Lois fought for the Equal Rights Amendment in both the US and Maine constitutions. She served as a regional leader in the fight against violence against women and girls as well as the National Organization for Women. When I was president of the National Organization for Women and she was the executive vice president, I had the good fortune to collaborate attentively with her. Up until the time of her passing, she fought for women’s rights and was extremely happy of Maine for passing landmark legislation to put an end to sex trafficking.
Reckitt served as executive vice president from 1984 to 1988 while serving on the federal panel of NOW for 15 years. She was chosen for the job and immediately got to work, putting in 60 to 70 days per week. She cofounded and replicated the Human Rights Campaign Fund in Maine, where she also served for eight centuries on the federal panel. For many years, she was a part of the National Coalition to Stop Home Violence.
In “Feminists Who Changed America” (1963–1975), she is mentioned.
Reckitt was an only child and the smallpox survivor’s kid who grew up in Massachusetts. She traveled to Maine by following her father, who was serving in South Portland’s Coast Guard. She claimed that at the moment, she had no idea that she was a lesbian. She learned this fact during two marriages, and eventually she came up and fought for gay rights.
Her family, Marjorie Lewis Wright of South Portland, and her parents, George A. Galway of Winthrop, Massachusetts, passed away before her.
She is survived by Lyn Kjenstad Carter, her devoted 20-year partner/wife, daughter, Barbara M. Carter-Eide, son-in-law, Palanthrop, Crystal L. Hartford, five children, and numerous relatives from the Galway and Wright people.
In addition to being a national leader in domestic violence, she also served as Maine’s real head. When she returned to Maine, she was worn out and declared that she would do nothing but sleeping for six weeks. She founded Family Crisis Shelter, which later changed to family problems services, then Through These Doors, and oversaw it for more than three decades, taking time off for her job in Washington, D.C. But she carried on with her work, leading a $30 million agency, 30 staff members, three outreach offices, and an abandoned women’s shelter. She advocated for tougher laws and more aggressive enforcement of domestic abuse because she was at the forefront of efforts to stop it and support its patients. She successfully lobbied for anti-stitching policy, a domestic assault killing review section, and gun control measures for perpetrators while raising public awareness of the severity of domestic abuse.
She worked to greater understand domestic violence and the damage it caused as well as to pass legislation. According to longtime pal and retired judge Michael Cantara, her strategy was based on her conviction that people want to act in a just and moral manner and that most people may serve victims better if they are aware of the dynamics of domestic violence.
Reckitt was in charge of numerous parties, but occasionally he had to start them all. The Maine Right to Select, the Maine Coalition for Human Rights, and the Matlovich Society for Gay Rights and AIDS Awareness were a few of the businesses she founded, either entirely or partially. 45 years before, she and eight other people, including the current governor, The Maine Women’s Lobby was started by Janet Mills. Reckitt “set for a serious case of what it is like to operate on an problem, to follow your heart, and to working on the issue in every conceivable way,” according to Desta Hohman Sprague, the current executive director of Women’s Lobby. I just adore the fact that she always stopped working as an activist and finally a policymaker.
When she passed away, state officials praised her, describing her as a trailblazer, female icon, hero, present pioneer, and “truly remarkable person.”
When Mills went to Lois ‘house to swear her in for her final term in office, she said, “Lois never stopped trying to make our state better for everyone.” She was a lovely friend, and I did miss her terribly.
Reckitt always gave up despite knowing that her work would require energy, which may have put her to the test. She made three attempts to introduce an Equal Rights Amendment to the Maine Legislature, but each day she was rejected. She contributed to the formation of the partnership that introduced Maine’s first gay rights act. She and another protesters believed that passing a law may get ten years. 25 were required. Only two donors were available to her. Gerald Talbot, the second dark person elected to the Maine Legislature, was one of them. Talbot went to a store to purchase the book he needed to learn more about gay right. Reckitt recalled, “They wouldn’t take the money out of his hand because they believed he was gay.” The event demonstrated the challenge they faced. Even though no one spoke against the act, Reckitt gave the opening evidence, it failed.
At this point, she barely came up. She made the decision to remain hidden until the first battle was over before emerging at a right friend’s farmhouse in Newcastle. Gay privileges were in her game plan as of that point. She established a team that gave gays and lesbians safe havens to congregate in order to lessen their isolation after working with AIDS-dead gay man. It started out with six or seven persons and quickly increased to 150, requiring several hours of driving. At the boy’s death, she would serve as a groomsman.
She wasn’t a rabble rouser despite the intensity of her work to fix things that were broken; instead, she tended to work in the background. However, her arrest twice occurred, once when she was protesting apartheid at the South African embassy in Washington. When the federal gay rights action protested Reagan’s ineffective response to the AIDS crisis in Washington, she once more entered the fray. She was obviously shocked that Reagan had never used the word “AIDS” in an oral history interview. She remarked, “Reagan was like a ditz.”
She protested outside the White House in the banal manner of the time, sitting over and refusing to move. Seventy-seven people were detained. In her dental history interview, she claimed that she was the first, “certainly because I was particularly ridiculous or anything,” but rather because of the protest’s setup. She asserted that she had “the peculiar distinction of being the first women in the United States to be detained by police using those Playtex plastic boots, “which they used to” reach down my pants to see if I was carrying who knows what.”
Her British heritage was one of her many objectives. She traveled widely, taught swimming and science, played baseball in college, knit, embroidered, and did needlework. She adored the Boston Red Sox and Celtics the most.
She earned college degrees in biology from Brandeis University and marine science and natural zoology from Boston University, which seems to be at odds with her life’s job. However, she claimed that her academic training had taught her how to approach life.
Longtime buddy Lee Umphrey remarked, “She loved the ocean and she loved that she lived close to the beach.” She enjoyed claiming that South Portland’s congressional district was located on the lake.
She previously referred to the movement for women’s rights, the gay rights movement, and the fight against violence against women as her three greatest loves. She remarked, “I have lived an intriguing life.”
According to Cantara, the retired determine, “Lois reached adulthood when the civil rights, environmental protection, anti-Vietnam movement, opposition to apartheid, and equality for women motion were forward and center.” She made the decision to dedicate her life to serving the underprivileged, marginalized, forgotten, and dismissed. She was really serious about her congressional responsibilities. Up until two weeks before she passed away, she was working on congressional issues.
Yet from her hospital bed, she took part in a national meeting that centered on her groundbreaking Maine efforts to put an end to sexual exploitation. She received the Dignity Defense Award from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation as a token of its understanding. Umphrey stated that Lois “was in the chair supporting equality” all the way to the finish. “She gave it everything she had until the very close.”
But she questioned what her lifestyle may amount to in her oral past interview from 1999. She said, “One of the things I’ve been worried about is not having my life vanish.” I believe that at some point, someone may recall my arrival on the planet. I’ve accomplished a lot of fine. Knowing that, I believe I’m just halfway there.
On November 12, the Maine Irish Heritage Center in Portland hosted a tribute to her existence. The university’s manager and board had both been held by Reckitt.
Instead of flowers, funds are advised to:
Byway of These Gates at 737-234-6464, To The Maine Heritage Center Gray Street, 34 04112-7588 Portland, Maine 207-780-0118
