'The Purple Lady,' 86, was a champion for the environment

Just whisper the name Nancy Ayers to those who knew her back in her local heyday, and wait for them to exclaim, "Oh! The Purple Lady! I remember her!"

A former Endwell resident, Nancy, 86, died at her Albany home on Jan. 28.

"The Purple Lady" was no misnomer. Indeed, it applied to her from top to toe. She had dyed her hair various shades of lavender, had a wardrobe that excluded most other colors, loved amethyst jewelry and orchids, wore purple sneakers, drove an eggplant-colored car and surrounded herself with various shades of that happy hue, including in the flowers of her garden.

Purple powerhouse

But that's not all Nancy was known for when she lived locally.

Evalyn Seaver, 95, knew her through the Unitarian Universalist congregation in Binghamton.

"She was well-known because she was always active in political things," said Evalyn, who lives in Endwell. "She was her own person; very daring, if I dare say so!"

Many newspaper articles both here and elsewhere chronicled the activist who was a driving force for the then-nascent local conservation movement.

Much of Nancy's wide renown came from her efforts to create Broome County's parks, environmental education centers for kids to learn about nature and how she helped get DDT banned as a roadside pesticide, said daughter Sara Ayers of Castleton.

Author Alfred Runte, who has a doctorate in environmental history and has taught in many major institutions of higher education, was a 19-year-old student at what's now known as Binghamton University when he first met Nancy in 1966.

"What a key person in Binghamton history she was," said Alfred, who lives in Seattle. He remembers her outrage at an Army Corps of Engineers' proposal to put a series of dams along the Upper Susquehanna, almost from Cooperstown south to the Scranton-Wilkes Barre region. "If she had not been there, the Corps of Engineers would have gotten a lot farther on their proposal."

That was but one of the flashpoints against which she made a lot of noise.

"She was always on Route 7 to Albany, before Route 88," he said. "And from the years '65 to '72, she was probably in a newspaper at least once a month."

Nancy, who had attended high school and college in Virginia and moved to Endwell in 1950, understood well that young people hold the future in their hands. Alfred remembers coming to her house for a piece of pie with some of his peers.

"She was our mentor," he said. Nancy invited him to join the Susquehanna Conservation Council, which she began in 1964 and whose name she changed to the Susquehanna Environmental Education Council in 1971. His book, "National Parks: The American Experience," first published in 1979, recounts the idea and evolution of the National Park System.

Controversial celebrity

Nancy networked with and inspired an uncountable number of caring individuals, including (the late) syndicated cartoonist Johnny Hart of Ninevah, whose "BC" comics carried pointed messages about conservation.

Her choice of coloring won her the label "The Purple Grackle" in local media, and served to call attention to her — and her strident messages about the environment.

Johnson City resident Dolores Elliott vividly remembers those lavender locks, as well as Nancy's activities with the Conservation Committee of the League of Women Voters. "We drove to out-of-town lectures and attended government meetings," Dolores said.

Then Dolores became involved with archeological research and served on the board of the Broome County Historical Society and the B.C. American Revolution Bicentennial Commission. "(I) saw less of her except on the TV news. And she was always visible with her purple hair," she said

Nancy also served on the Temporary State Subcommittee on Youth Education in Conservation, as the moderator for the WSKG series "Speak Up Ecology," and was active in many other forums.

As her obituary details, Nancy moved from Greater Binghamton to Albany in 1974 to work as an executive assistant to the New York State Senate Consumer Protection Committee, where she was instrumental in passing legislation creating the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. She later worked as an analyst for the New York State Legislature's Administrative Regulations Review Commission. After retiring, she volunteered for many years for The Community Hospice at Albany's St. Peter's Hospital.

Nancy is survived by her husband, William T. Battin of Albany; her children, Lydia Ayers (Andrew Horner) of Hong Kong; James Ayers (Micaela Ayers) of El Dorado, Kan.; Sara Ayers (Greg Haymes) of Castleton; and Sarah Ritchie-Crowther (Dan Crowther) of Valley Falls; her cousin, Patricia James of Roanoke, Va.; her sister-in-law, Song Cha James of Valrico, Fla.; and eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Look around, appreciate all the green, and say a silent "thank you" for the efforts of Nancy Ayers.

Follow Valerie on Twitter @PSBValerieZehl.