Save the Bay’s last living founder, Sylvia McLaughlin, died at her home in Berkeley on Tuesday. She was 99. The organization helped kick off the modern, grassroots environmental movement in the Bay Area.

In the 1950s, San Francisco Bay was in dire shape. There were plans to fill in most of it for development, leaving just a narrow channel of water. The Bay was regularly filled to provide space for ports, industry, airports, homes, and even garbage dumps.

Families didn't stroll along the shoreline because it was rife with trash and industrial development. The wetlands and wildlife were quickly disappearing.

McLaughlin could not sit by.

She and friends Kay Kerr and Esther Gulick started a movement to stop Berkeley's plan to fill in 2,000 acres of the Bay.