Patty Wallace never planned to become an activist. She just didn’t like what she saw.

At first she was shy to speak up, and she never said a curse word until she was over 70. “Certain words, you need ’em for emphasis, and I don’t care to use them anymore.”

Wallace turns 80 on April 5, and she took a few minutes recently to look back on her 20-plus years of fighting for justice as a member of KFTC.

She calls KFTC “the most important organization I’ve ever belonged to. I’ve learned so much and met the best people. I wouldn’t take anything for my years with KFTC.”

Wallace first got involved with KFTC in the 1980s when a company called Pyrochem wanted to build a hazardous waste incinerator in her community in Lawrence County. As a Girl Scout leader, she had learned about environmental issues in Eastern Kentucky and she was ready to defend her community.

She heard about the Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition, as KFTC was originally known, and got help from KFTC to organize and fight the incinerator. She and her neighbors learned leadership skills, how to talk to local officials, and how to lobby in Frankfort.

Working with other KFTC members, they helped to pass a Hazardous Waste Local Control Bill in the Kentucky General Assembly in 1988 and defeated Pyrochem for good. They also supported other KFTC chapters in different battles across the state.

Wallace became KFTC chairperson in 1988, when the broad form deed campaign was at its peak. Of all her many moments in KFTC, one of her proudest was when the broad form deed amendment passed in 1988 and guaranteed landowners some protection from surface mining.

As she became more active in KFTC’s statewide work, Wallace kept an eye on her own community. She and her niece Ruth Colvin attracted national media attention when they fought asbestos disposal at nearby Roe Creek. When the local sheriff suggested they not enter Roe Creek without a gun, Colvin got deputized and started carrying one. Audubon magazine dubbed them “Housewives from Hell,” and television show Expose featured them in a program about the influence of organized crime in the garbage business. They were also featured in Dr. Richard Leakey’s Earth Journal television program and AARP’s Modern Maturity magazine.

On more than one occasion, Wallace has answered the question of why she became an activist in this way:

“Because I am responsible and answerable to God for the things that are within my power to change, even if only by the way I live and speak out when I see a wrong.

Because there are many other children and adults who have no one to speak for them.

Because I agree with two-thirds of the state who favor clean air and water over jobs and economic development.

Because there are alternatives to the problems of this dispose-all society.”

Wallace’s current goal is to end mountaintop removal.

“To me, the most beautiful areas are these little hollows with the rhododendron, the hemlock, the rocks. I love to discover a place like that … and to think that we can just cover that up and destroy it all, it just makes me sick,” she says.

If you’d like to honor Wallace’s 80^th birthday, here are a few suggestions:

• Leave a comment for her below.
• Donate $80 to KFTC in her honor. Click here to donate online.
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper calling for an end to mountaintop removal and a transition to a cleaner, healthier and more prosperous economy in Eastern Kentucky. Follow this link for tips on writing a good letter.