Dixie Dugan White, who passed away April 18, was one of a kind.

It would be difficult to find anyone in the Lehigh Valley who was more of an activist. She worked with countless organizations for economic equality, human rights and the environment. She was determined, but she always kept her sense of humor.

Her many socially-active involvements included President, Pennsylvania Chapter, National Organization of Women; Senior Field Organizer, Chicago Chapter, National Organization of Women, and first director, AIDS Service Center of the Lehigh Valley.

White was a caseworker for Northampton County Children and Youth and Intensive Case Manager with Northampton County’s Drug and Alcohol Division.

White was 77.

The Rev. Scott Allen, rector, St, Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Allentown, which was White’s parish home, was a close friend of White’s, and gave her last rites.

“She was a very complex person, with a broad range of activities and interests,” says Allen.

“She was a renaissance woman. The only thing she didn’t do was play a musical instrument.

“One thing people might not have known about her was that she was a very devout Christian. She taught Sunday School when working on her master’s degree at Syracuse University.”

White was raised Roman Catholic and attended parochial school. She received a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and a master’s degree from Syracuse University.

While a member of her former parish, Trinity Episcopal Church, Bethlehem, White was chair of the Bethlehem Council of Churches and served on a number of committees. White also had many functions and positions at St. Andrew’s.

“She did a lot of work for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and the labor movement,” says Allen.

“She grew up in Bethlehem’s Marvine-Pembroke public housing community, and had compassion for and identity with working-class people. She thought workers should get a living wage, and that people who worked with their hands and back needed money to live a good life.”

Allen recalls many stories about White. One anecdote had to do with Phyllis Schlafly, a famous opponent of the ERA and of feminism. White got close enough to Schlafly during an event to put a sticker on her back that stated: “A Lesbian Was Here.”

“She was an early advocate of gay rights,” says Allen of White, at a time when being gay often met a great deal of resistance. “But she had such authority, velocity and power, she did not have any trouble, People let her do stuff.”

Allen says that White won a long-standing battle with the Internal Revenue Service when she took a deduction for bras as work clothes since she only wore them at work. Allen says the IRS eventually gave up.

“She wanted to travel to every continent,” Allen says, and believes White made it to all of them except Antarctica.

“She was always trying to teach herself something. She was an excellent cook and was an instructor at the former Anna Rodale Gourmet Cooking Center, Allentown.

“She was very handy. She would fix something before she would buy new. She had a coupon for everything.”

One of the humorous remembrances about White is that it was said that she probably had a coupon for a funeral.

Marcie Lightwood, a Bethlehem resident and good friend of White, recalls her as being “very brave and creative. She stepped into social movements more easily than anyone I ever knew.

“She had a no-bull policy towards people. She told me a few times that I was speaking nonsense,” Lightwood recalls.

Gardening was one of White’s passions. Lightwood mentions the garden in White’s yard at her residence along Ontario Street near the Five Points on Bethlehem’s Southside.

“She knew the Latin names of nearly all the plants in her garden. There were hundreds of them,” says Lightwood.

White cultivated fruit trees, vegetables, and had a fish pond.

“She thought having a lawn was a waste,” Lightwood says.

Lightwood says White traveled to Washington, D.C., with busloads of people for the 20th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

When she and Lightwood were members on the vestry of Trinity Bethlehem, the church was visited by members of the virulent anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church.

Instead of mounting a counter-protest, Trinity welcomed the group with juice and cookies. Lightwood says that the hospitality was not accepted.

There will be an office named in White’s honor at the Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, Allentown.

Donations: www.bradburysullivancenter.org/dixieduganwhite