SPANISH FORT, Ala. — Baldwin County’s delicate environment lost one of its most vocal champions Thursday with the passing of longtime educator and activist Jeanne Lacey.

Lacey, 83, was most visible in the community through her work with the League of Women Voters of Baldwin County, where she served two terms as president and made improving water quality her mission.

“She was an involved lady, and when she retired from teaching, she just put her heart and soul into the community,” said Pat Laraway, the league’s current first vice president and a friend of Lacey’s since 1980.

Eric Lacey, her youngest son, said his mother was an educator first, having spent more than 20 years as a guidance counselor and home economics teacher at Daphne Middle School.

“A lot of people think she was just an activist, but she was really an educator first and foremost.

“She was always trying to help guide, nurture and raise awareness about these issues,” he said. “She really just took to heart the needs of the community in regards to education and tried every chance she got to guide and inform the younger generations. She could just get people talking and always get the best out of them.”

Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper, called Jeanne Lacey the “most active, engaged, hardest-working woman I could ever aspire to be,” and said she simply “can’t imagine a better angel” looking down on the legacy she’s left behind.

“She was absolutely brilliant, and so committed. She was the best thorn in your side. When she wanted something done, she was going to make sure it got accomplished. She stayed after anything she cared about and stayed after you to make sure you stayed after it,” Callaway said. “She was so important to me, and she will be so missed.”

Eric Lacey said the Baldwin County Watershed Coalition and working to reform Alabama’s 1901 constitution were the “two major issues she worked hard on the last 20 years of her life.”

“She was really horrified by what comes down these rivers from north of us, and she felt like if we could start here we could work northward to find a solution,” he said.

And anyone who knew her knew she loved her daily walks to the top of May Day Park to “check out the beaches” before moving to Westminster Village in Spanish Fort 12 years ago, he said.

Westminster’s Gordon Korb said Jeanne Lacey co-authored the retirement community’s history for its 25th anniversary, conducting all of the research for it and completing the initial writing as well.

“My mother was a participant, not a messenger,” Eric Lacey said. “Her involvement with the League of Women Voters was important to her, not because she was a feminist by any means, but because she felt like that was a group she could make an impact with and she did.”

Aside from “basically formulating” the league’s statewide environmental platform using Baldwin and Mobile counties as a template, Eric Lacey said you were always more likely to find his mother clipping newspaper items, firing off emails to politicians and coordinating meetings than relaxing in a manner befitting most retirees.

“Ask any state legislator or county commissioner from this area, and they’ll give you the date and time of the last time she called and wore them out about something,” he said. “She just wanted to create a better community by getting people to understand and help each other, to check rampant development and take care of the environmental consequences of our expanding population.”

A memorial service honoring Jeanne Lacey will be held at 2 p.m. July 18 at Spanish Fort Presbyterian Church.