Sandy Baird, a self-taught lawyer and former state legislator who spent a lifetime pursuing justice for victims of domestic violence, died early Monday. She was 84.
Her passing was briefly recognized at the Burlington City Council meeting on Monday night. Family members were not immediately available to comment.
“That’s literally classic Sandy,” said Carter, who first met Baird in 2006. “She will call you 14 times in a day to talk about one case that she’s got going, and invariably, that case is representing those people who would not otherwise be represented.”
Raised in Massachusetts, Baird moved to Burlington in 1968 after her then-husband, Grant Crichfield, got a position teaching French at the University of Vermont. She quickly became a figure in a growing women’s rights movement, joining a committee that founded the first clinic in Vermont to offer legal abortions the year before Roe v. Wade became federal law.
Baird embarked on a law career in the 1970s and clerked for a judge for four years in lieu of going to law school, working on divorce and abuse cases. After an unsuccessful bid for Burlington mayor in 1989, she served two terms in the Vermont legislature, where she helped pass measures to aid women seeking legal protection from their abusers.
In a cruel twist of irony, Baird’s own daughter was killed in 1998 in a domestic violence incident in Essex. The tragedy led Baird to create the Caroline Fund, a nonprofit that provides grants to women in need of shelter, food, health care and transportation.
Baird also worked for 30 years as a professor at the former Burlington College, where she organized a study program in Cuba. She was a founding member of Burlington’s sister-city program that has forged bonds with Bethlehem in the West Bank and Yaroslavl, Russia.
More recently, Baird had been offering free weekly legal clinics and hosting a series of discussions on current events that were broadcast on Town Meeting TV.
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Baird was known for her pro bono legal work, which in recent years focused on helping immigrant women. She worked closely with AALV, a nonprofit that provides free legal advice to new Americans on matters ranging from citizenship to domestic violence.
Yacouba Jacob Bogre, the organization’s executive director, said Baird’s work empowered women.
“We are at loss,” he wrote in an email. “There is so much to say about Sandy. No words can encapsulate her work and contribution to our community.”
An outspoken contrarian, Baird had a libertarian streak that aligned her with no particular political party. As a legislator, she worked with anti-abortion advocates on laws to protect the privacy of birth mothers in adoption cases — and also with male strippers and flag burners on matters of free speech.
Former lieutenant governor David Zuckerman, a Progressive, posted a tribute to Baird on Facebook, noting that he tried unsuccessfully to unseat her in 1994.
“She was a devoted advocate for women and people who were left behind in our economic system,” he wrote. “She was a passionate teacher of aspects of history that some people did not want taught. She was a fierce fighter.”
A peace activist through and through, Baird protested the killing of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces in 2011. More recently, she showed up to city council meetings to support the free-speech rights of activists who post anti-transgender stickers on street signs and newspaper stands.
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Burlington attorney John Franco, who knew Baird for almost 50 years, will remember her free spirit.
“The hole she will leave behind for her energy, her doggedness, her idealism, her vision — it’s pretty amazing,” he said. “You couldn’t stop her.”
This post will be updated.