The Wind at Her Back: The Life of Transportation Visionary Deb A. Hubsmith

By Amity Hotchkiss and Andy Peri

"May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back" begins a traditional Irish blessing. This book is a biography of a woman who immersed herself in nature, inspired by her love of the planet Earth, for which she had a deep reverence and fierce dedication.

Deb Hubsmith's legacy lives on in these stories of how she helped change the landscape of human-powered transportation both in her own community and nationwide. She brought her uncanny ability to weave together the perfect tapestry of political and community support to get major infrastructure projects completed in Marin County. Her work continued to expand with her crucial contribution to bringing Safe Routes to School from a single school in the San Francisco Bay Area to schools in all fifty states.

Outside of her work, Deb's was an inspired life of yoga and dance, community involvement, and spiritual practices, which helped guide her in ultimately letting go of everything she held dear. This book sheds light on her courage and resilience in facing a terminal illness. Indeed, the road did rise up to meet Deb, and the wind held her with grace, wisdom, and beauty, carrying her to her very last breath.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886545302

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The Wind at Her Back

The Life of Transportation Visionary Deb A. Hubsmith

Amity Hotchkiss and Andy Peri

Copyright © 2023 Andy Peri and Amity Hotchkiss

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2023

ISBN 979-8-88654-529-6 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-88654-530-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword (Risa Wilkerson)

Preface (Andy Peri)

Preface (Amity Hotchkiss)

The Call That Changed It All

Journey to Chemotherapy

Rising Up in the East

College Days: Engineering to Environmentalism

California Dreamin'

Walking Her Talk

Go Geronimo!

Roots of Safe Routes

Maiden Voyage in Fairfax

Finding Oberstar

Tricks of the Trade

Her Spirit Naturally Awakens

Reiki and Healing

Seeking Balance

Following History's Path

The Dirt Connection

Critical Mass: Tipping Point for a Movement

Renegades on the Bridge

Stepping into the Circle

For the Love of Dance

A Transportation Transformation

Bikes on Buses

Find Me the Money!

Puerto Suello Hill Pathway

The Dance of Relationship

Transition to a New Partnership

Community Contact

Light at the End of the Tunnel

No Parking Lot on the Path

Trestle Wrestle Continues

Blasting through the Cal Park Hill

Hell Realms and New Birth

Bone Marrow Transplant Time

Transplant Day Zero: A New Birthday

Trapped in the Twilight Zone

Safe Routes Goes National

Safe Routes National Launch

Testifying Before Congress

Amplifying Safe Routes Nationally

DC Lobby Day: Leadership and Joy

Dancin' the Nation

Kauai's Safe Routes

Reemergence

Home for the Summer

SMART Parallel Pathways

A SMART Victory

Life Takes a Turn

Diagnosis and Serous Atrophy

A Ray of Light

Wedding Day

Going Home

Goodbye Kaiser

A Last Resort

Beyond the Infusion

Returning to Source

Walking Each Other Home

Saying Goodbye

Melting and Merging

Two Celebrations

Celebration of Life

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Deb Hubsmith's Awards and Recognitions

About the Authors

T

his book is dedicated to our beloved Deb Hubsmith whose energy, dance, smile, and vision lit up the world in innumerable ways. Deb challenged us to serve this planet by working to make it safer and more sustainable for all beings. We bow to Deb and to her life as one who continues to inspire love and hope in this precious, beautiful, and troubled world. This work is a remembrance of her life and her bright and indomitable spirit.

We also dedicate this work to this precious living Earth and all of her ecosystems—and to all those, like our friend Deb, who work relentlessly toward a just and sustainable planetary future.

Foreword (Risa Wilkerson)

Risa Wilkerson

Some people are simply ahead of their time.

Deb Hubsmith was one of those people. When I met Deb, she was forming the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, and I was leading a statewide coalition on Safe Routes to School in Michigan. She was networking in her uniquely energetic way to form her national steering committee, and even though we hadn't yet worked together, she asked me to be the chair of her steering committee. I expressed doubt about whether I was the right person, and she brought a level of warmth, certainty, and vision that quickly convinced me to say yes.

I served in this role for the next thirteen years, ten of which were alongside Deb. In that decade, she became my friend, peer, mentor, and inspiration. I was amazed at her endless energy for life's joys and demands. She was rigorous in her preparation for any goal or event. Deb was a savvy entrepreneur, a lifelong learner, an advocate for social justice, and a relentless community organizer. Among her outstanding professional achievements for which I knew her best, I was most impressed with her ability to know and stay true to herself while also serving the greater good. This is not an easy feat.

As a female nonprofit leader, I know that impostor syndrome (doubting your abilities or that you can live up to people's expectations) is real, yet Deb never seemed to have it. I know how challenging it can be to balance my own needs with the needs of friends, families, neighbors, coworkers, clients, and professional partners. Deb figured out how to nourish herself and her beloved community while building an influential national organization. Deb came into her powerful self earlier than most people I know.

This biography taught me even more about Deb and confirmed to what extent Deb was ahead of her time. Today, people talk about the intersecting and existential crises of climate change, public health, and racism. Deb long understood the absolute urgency of disrupting systems and creating conditions that honor and respect humans and the planet. That's why she fought so voraciously for climate-friendly and equitable transportation options. She continuously pushed her team to expand their organizational impact, was inclusive in her approach to partnering and networking, and equity-centered in sharing resources and opportunities.

She was also ahead of her time in understanding the need to create a sense of belonging, for herself and others. Early in her life, she bravely moved across the country and tried new experiences to find people, places, and practices that nourished her soul, even when it meant making difficult choices. She invested energy into creating a strong local community of friends that bonded through shared values and experiences. They became an especially important part of her support system during those last challenging years.

There are so many lessons to learn from Deb's life. What I found most impressive was how she handled the most difficult news of her life—having cancer and realizing that she wasn't going to beat it. I believe that a person's true character comes out when things get rough. Deb's optimism and determination went to rare depths. She tapped into deep reservoirs of love and chose attitudes and actions that helped her to maintain agency over her life until the very end. Even during the process of dying, Deb remained relationship-focused. Deb called me and her deputy director periodically throughout her cancer journey to share her wisdom and her gratitude for us. I was incredibly humbled and thankful for the chance to say goodbye and to thank her for her friendship and support.

I encourage anyone who is interested in a life well-lived to read this book. I especially encourage women of all ages to devour Deb's story for insights on how to be an authentic leader in the social justice realm and how to tap into love, community, and your own powerful self to be the change you want to see in this world, and to inspire others to create a more just and joyful future for all.

—Risa Wilkerson

Executive Director of Healthy Places by Design

(Former colleague and friend of Deb Hubsmith)

Preface (Andy Peri)

Andy Peri

Deb and I made many outlines for books we wanted to write together during our short eight years together as a couple. The themes we intended to write about included our love for this earth, how to effect change in our communities and the world, our spiritual journeys, and the love we shared in our relationship. While we made plans to write books together, we never could get beyond writing outlines because of our busy professional lives.

But we will certainly do it later, we thought. When later arrived, it did so in a dramatically different way than expected. The circumstances surrounding the journey of leukemia that would follow were certainly not the ones we planned during our many brainstorming sessions together, but perhaps these were pathways that our two souls chose, long ago.

After Deb's bone marrow transplant and recovery in mid-2014, when we thought she had been cured of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), she began writing her memoir. Deb wrote a lot in her professional life and had become adept at writing and editing, and it was no surprise when she decided to start writing her memoir and knocked out the first twenty-two pages, most of which was focused on the first week of her diagnosis with leukemia, in the span of a few days.

Not long afterward, we were saddened and shocked to learn that Deb's transplant had failed, and her leukemia had returned. Her writing stopped as all her energy would now be directed toward basic survival, including her struggle to breathe because of severe asthma and the myriad of intense pain that came with another round of chemotherapy and an ever-weakening body.

When Deb realized she would not be writing her memoir herself, she made it clear that she still wanted the book written. She asked her dear friend Amity Hotchkiss, an English teacher and writer, to be involved by writing the chapters that were relevant to their long friendship and their spiritual journey together.

While I was initially not sure who would take the lead on writing the rest of the book, it soon became clear that I would be that person for several reasons, including that I lived and worked in Deb's professional world and we shared our spiritual, community dance, and social lives together. Also, I would be the one that would be taking possession of Deb's computers, many dozens of boxes of files, records, photos, videos, and journals. I would also be in possession of the recording of many interviews I did with her about her life. And deep in my heart, I wanted to make sure that Deb's wish actually materialized and to help propagate into the future her work that so deeply inspired me and which might inspire other advocates and activists to action as well.

By 2016, I was beginning to churn out chapters. By 2017, the book began to take shape with dozens of sections completed. Then in 2019, several months before the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, Amity joined in the process, becoming a fundamental part of the effort by contributing many chapters, doing interviews with family and friends, and helping give style, shape, and character to the book.

While Amity and I each wrote certain chapters individually, in the end, like a game of ping pong, we edited and re-edited each other's chapters over and over again. In a few cases, there are sections that were written by friends, others that were taken directly from recorded transcripts, and still others that were actually written in part by Deb.

An overriding goal that I personally had set forth for this book was to attempt to integrate Deb's life story into what her dear friend Christopher Campbell coined one day prior to Deb's diagnosis as One Deb. Perhaps not uncommon, Deb's life was in many ways fragmented into her professional life and her personal life. Deb had an ongoing yearning to integrate the many elements of her life into one that was sustainable, with less stress, more joy, more community, and more ease while still contributing to the world. For Deb, the term One Deb began to develop into a symbol of her new emerging balanced life that would begin the process of self-integration into a new unified version of herself.

The writing project that Deb and I had envisioned in so many conversations and brainstorms came at last, but instead of having Deb by my side to bounce ideas off, I have instead needed to tap into her divine inspiration and our love to carry this project along. We have done our best to represent Deb's life accurately and to faithfully tell her story.

With deepest love and gratitude, Amity and I share this book with you!

Preface (Amity Hotchkiss)

Amity Hotchkiss

In Oct ober 2013, I called Deb to check in and say hi. That was when she calmly told me that her period flow had been unusually heavy and that she had delayed a planned work trip to the East Coast pending a doctor visit. Worried, I called her the next day, and she told me a doctor had confirmed a leukemia diagnosis. My brain stopped in its tracks. Deb, cancer? Cancer in Deb? It seemed completely unreal, and my mind went numb. It was just incredulous that my sharply intelligent, athletic, and spirited friend was suddenly struck with this terrible fate, which would soon transform every aspect of her body and mind.

After an intense journey of fear, hope, and intense medical treatments, including a bone marrow transplant that ultimately failed, by the spring 2015, it became clear that Deb would lose her leukemia battle and would realize her impending death. By summer 2015, Deb began making real plans to leave this world.

One Wednesday when I made my weekly visit, she made this request—Would I help her husband, Andy, write a book about her life? My mind still locked in denial, I nodded, and with my heart in my hand, I told her I would do it. She told me she'd already started it, talking to Andy about the idea of a book about her life. She explained that Andy knew many of the details of her transportation activism and accomplishments, but then she locked eyes on me to ask, Would I write about her personal and spiritual life?

We had very little time to discuss the book project during the last months of her life. Deb spent much of her days sleeping or resting in between visits to the outpatient clinics or emergency rooms for blood transfusions, getting massages, and other healing sessions with friends and receiving spiritual mentoring.

Some weeks later, we discussed why she wanted us to write about her life's journey, and she said she wanted her experiences to benefit other environmental advocates. She had mentored several young women in recent years and, as a national leader, had inspired many to take up bicycling as a primary form of transportation. She told me that the greatest promise for change sat with the youth, who would take up the important torch of working to change human transportation patterns and systems, especially to reduce or eliminate our dependence on fossil fuel while making the roads safer for all users.

During my writing process, many of the people I interviewed remembered Deb's uncanny ability to work a room like a honeybee. It was with the combination of sharp-minded intention and heartfelt conviction that she could convince everyone from fellow activists to US senators to do the right thing, which proved to be the strongest recipe for lasting success.

Four years after Deb's passing, near the end of 2019, I still had not begun working on the manuscript with Andy, who had already completed a rough first draft. He knew so much about Deb's bicycle advocacy because he worked with her so closely, for many years prior to her diagnosis. But as COVID swept through China and became an international pandemic, we locked arms and began to move toward the light at the end of the tunnel of completing this project.

This book you're holding is living testament to the promise I gave Deb and to the gift she unwittingly gave to me—the privilege of writing about the birth and nurturance of her spiritual life during her adult life, imbuing it with her deep, ecological values to show her depth of commitment to this living matrix upon which we live, our precious planet Earth.

At times, I would have down days or weeks, especially with my full-time high school teaching schedule. I commonly was lifted to action when I would simply ask myself, What would Deb do? Deb's inspiration would fill my heart and send me back to the drawing board, on countless occasions.

In writing this book, I have attempted to capture the profound nature of Deb's spiritual life as it supported her professional work and livelihood. She consciously provided a transformational model of how humans could learn to reduce dependence on cars and the fossil fuels. Like many others, I could never resist her vision, inspired by seeing through her eyes.

Her dedication and focus also came at a cost. She carried herself so professionally that she didn't often show it, but her intense work schedule had begun to take its toll on her health. She would pursue her goals with such zeal that close friends sometimes expressed concern, and while she might acknowledge this, she would then explain the importance of her current work initiative. She persisted in chasing each goal with optimal verve and energy but perhaps knew, deep down, that her work life might not be sustainable.

Andy and I hope this book continues to help people work for transportation resiliency and environmental sustainability. We continue to be fueled by the milestones Deb reached and the sacrifices she made to get there, during her short time living on this beautiful planet.

The Call That Changed It All

Hey world, what you say,

Should I stick around for another day or two?

Don't give up on me, I won't give up on you.

Michael Franti and Spearhead, Hey World [Don't Give Up Version], 2008

Deb was on a work conference call. She was feeling exhausted after spending a long night in the ER at Kaiser Permanente the night before, and she was worried about the results of her biopsy.

The phone rang, and the caller ID showed it was Kaiser Permanente in San Rafael, California. Deb hit mute on her work call line and answered the call. The oncologist, Dr. Lori Kim, whom Deb met the night before in the emergency room at Kaiser, was on the other line, and in a cheerful voice, she said, How are you, Deborah?

Well, I've been pretty nervous since we did the biopsy last night, Deb admitted, and I didn't get much sleep. She was thinking, but didn't say, that all night long she had had the song Hey World by her favorite musician, Michael Franti, in her head. It includes the lyrics Hey world, what you say, / Should I stick around for another day or two? / Don't give up on me, I won't give up on you.

Dr. Kim then delivered the news—the results of her biopsy from the night before showed that Deb had acute leukemia. She said the slides showed that she had a lot of abnormal cells. Dr. Kim said that Deb needed to be admitted to the hospital right away to start chemotherapy in order to save her life. She'd be there for four to six weeks, to start. Deb learned that she would not be able to leave the hospital until she was in remission, would need to limit her visitors, and would lose all her hair, among other difficult side effects.

What? Deb felt like someone had just punched her in the stomach. Her thoughts were running wild, with an intense sense of panic and anxiety. How could this be? She didn't feel all that sick. After all, she'd just been packing to go on a trip.

As a very healthy vegan who didn't smoke or drink alcohol and who exercised regularly, Deb really wondered whether they'd mixed her results up with someone else's.

In a state of shock and utter disbelief, Deb asked, What happens if I don't start treatment right away?

In a clear but incredulous voice, Dr. Kim replied, You're not thinking about not doing treatment, are you?

I just want to know the seriousness of the situation and all my options, Deb said.

It's serious. Without treatment, you'll die within a few days to a month, Dr. Kim said with certainty. "But with treatment, acute leukemia is very curable. We'll be giving you very strong chemotherapy—probably idarubicin for three days and cytarabine for seven days, twenty-four hours a day for a full week. The chemo will kill the bad cells, but it will kill the good cells too, which is why you have