The Observer, May 2006
Volunteer brought heart and head to work on council
By SUSAN SOMMER
Project Manager
Michelle Hahn O’Leary is proof you don’t need a high-level science degree to volunteer on the council’s Scientific Advisory Committee.
Being surrounded by Ph.D.s at meetings of SAC, as the committee is known, didn’t bother this longtime Alaskan. She knows that her voice, as well as others like her whose authority stems from a love of the natural world and living richly by the earth’s offerings, is a valuable piece of the process that helps protect Prince William Sound from oil spills.
Michelle Hahn O’Leary, a council volunteer for well over a decade, “gave us a perspective that helped us walk in two worlds,” says a scientist who worked with her on the Scientific Advisory Committee. “One is humanity, the other science.” She’s shown here with Pepper. Photo courtesy of Michelle Hahn O’Leary.
But that voice is leaving SAC. Michelle, a Cordova resident since 1974, recently resigned from the committee she first joined in the early 1990s. She was also instrumental in helping form the citizens’ council and spent several years on the board of directors.
In her recent farewell to the committee, Michelle wrote, “The SAC members have been a part of that voice and we speak not for ourselves, but for those who speak a language that is seldom heard. As scientists, you are the echo of that language. If you look beneath every project we have worked on you will see that a respect, stewardship and love for life is the motivating force. That is the reason so much has been accomplished; the work has been done not just from the head but from the heart.”
“Michelle may not be a science type,” says Dr. Peter Armato, fellow volunteer on SAC, “but she gave us a perspective that helped us walk in two worlds. One is humanity, the other science. Sometimes we become bogged down in science and fail to see the human component of our actions. Michelle has always provided that insight, which I believe helped us steer the best course we could.”
The simple life appeals to Michelle. Beachcombing is one of her favorite pastimes, and was one reason she moved to coastal Alaska from Oregon. Glass balls, bones, skulls, and shells adorn her office and home.
The chief motivation for her move north, though, was the unshakable feeling that she’d lived here in a past life. Once grown, she perused a map, noted how much coastline Montague Island had, packed her bags, and took off for Cordova, the closest community.
Michelle appreciates what nature offers in Cordova’s gemlike coastal setting, whether it’s finding treasures along the tide line, ice-skating to the toe of a glacier, bird watching, downhill skiing, or hiking and hunting with husband Michael and dog Pepper in Prince William Sound.
Volunteering for the council, then, was a natural extension of Michelle’s belief in safeguarding these natural resources.
When the herring fishery was shut down after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, she and her husband, like other commercial fishermen and residents of the sound, felt the economic impacts. But more important than that loss to Michelle was the feeling of being left out of the decision-making process. For eight years afterward, she represented the Cordova District Fishermen United on the council’s board and served on many committees including the executive committee.
After the spill, “people were completely left out,” says Michelle. Working with the committee on the council’s community impacts planning guidebook Coping with Technological Disasters helped rectify that omission.
“I appreciate that project and what it has the potential to do,” she says. “In fact, I’m fascinated by all the projects SAC does. LTEMP (the long-term environmental monitoring program) isn’t glamorous, but it’s necessary. Dispersants research is invaluable.”
“Think with your heart as well as your head,” she councils future committee members. She followed her own advice. Whenever the going got tough as a board member, she just kept thinking, “I’m doing this for the birds, I’m doing this for the fish.” A commercial fisherman for 32 years, Michelle finds the natural world a huge motivator behind her desire to volunteer. Fishing herring “for six weeks, spending every single day out there interacting with the environment—it’s about so much more than monetary gain.”
Michelle has lots of commercial fishing experience, including gillnetting in Bristol Bay, and herring seining in Prince William Sound and Togiak. She and Michael now focus on salmon gillnetting in Bristol Bay and on the Copper River Flats.
To supplement her fishing income, Michelle works full-time for six months each year in Cordova’s Legislative Information Office.
She’s also a ski patrol volunteer in Cordova, which meshes nicely with her husband’s job as avalanche consultant for the local electric co-op and for the state’s highways.
Cordova’s strong sense of community suits Michelle. “We voted three times to not get our mail delivered,” she says, “because we all get to meet each other at the post office.”
The town’s outdoor recreation opportunities keep her busy too. “We have beautiful mountains you can climb that fall straight down into the sea. There’s boating, hunting, fishing. Cordova is at the end of the northern rain forest with big spruce and hemlock trees. And we have the Copper River Delta, one of the largest shorebird stopovers and waterfowl nesting areas in the northern hemisphere.”
She’ll keep volunteering, even though her tenure with the council has ended. “We have such an amazing lifestyle here in Alaska. I always end up getting a lot more than I give.”