Transit activist Harry Sanders dies

Longtime Maryland transit activist Harry Sanders died on Wednesday.

Sanders was a driving force behind the Purple Line campaign. He also cofounded Montgomery County’s Action Committee for Transit and helped establish its Prince George’s counterpart, Prince George’s Advocates for Community-based Transit.

I didn’t have much opportunity to know Sanders, as he had stepped back from most transit advocacy in recent years due to declining health. Here are some of the quotes from those who knew him very well.

Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth wrote,

I first met Harry back in 1996. He was a wonderful mentor and was ever present as a passionate, caring and relentless advocate for transit, good regional planning and the Purple Line. He gave his retirement wholly to these causes and continued to do so throughout his illness.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Lee Epstein said,

For many years I depended upon Harry for his amazing “lay” expertise on transit. Always a gentle soul, and a gentleman, he was nevertheless a bulldog about that for which he cared so deeply, and one could often find him at a WashCOG meeting, a public hearing, or standing in the cold outside a Metro station handing out fliers. His passing leaves a large hole in the region’s civic fabric.

Adam Pagnucco wrote,

Harry’s passion was the Purple Line. He wore purple constantly and probably bled the color. But Harry actually served a higher cause: good government through civic engagement. He really believed that organized citizens could make our elected leadership better than what they were and produce superior outcomes. Harry showed up at all kinds of events and never criticized people who did not.

He loved young people and wanted them to be involved in shaping their world—a better world. He succeeded because Maryland’s smart growth movement is full of young people and they are going to create the kind of society Harry spent twenty years fighting for. Few other people in this county, elected or not, will ever be able to make such a claim. And Harry did it all with a warm smile, a gravelly laugh and a standing invitation to join and help. Lots of people did just that.

Most activists fight against things that are bad. Harry Sanders spent decades fighting for something that is good. There’s a big difference.

Finally, here’s Dan Reed:

[Harry’s wife] Barbara explained to me that, over thirty years ago, she and Harry had fought to bring the Green Line right into the center of the University of Maryland, despite fears from the administration and the city alike that it would “bring undesirables” into their community. While they lost that fight, they’ve never given up on improving transit all across suburban Maryland. …

Much of the praise Harry Sanders has received … has been about his work as a civic activist, but I think of him as so much more for that. In twenty-five years of pushing for what we now know as the Purple Line, Harry and his friends have done much more than civic activism. They aren’t about protecting the status quo. They aren’t about accepting things as they are. Their work reflects an optimism about the future — the possibility that we can make things better through our combined efforts — that people half their age have already lost.

I’m deeply saddened that Harry will never get to walk from his house to the future 16th Street Station and catch the Purple Line. It’s imperative that we get it built now. Not just for all the people who will benefit from it, but for someone without whom it could have never even happened.