Losing a leader, Vermont's poor seek a new public face

When Vermont anti-poverty workers learned of the death Monday of longtime advocate Edna Fairbanks-Williams, they marveled at everything the 77-year-old great-grandmother of 16 brought to the cause — and the humble, honest and occasionally humorous way she did it. For all their education and empathy, Shullenberger and most other social justice leaders lack such hardscrabble experience. Now that Fairbanks-Williams is gone, they fear the state has lost a valuable resource for connecting Vermonters with the human face of poverty. An estimated 65,000 Vermonters — 10 percent of the state's population — live below federal poverty levels.

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