Austin’s environmentalist icon Shudde Fath dies at 106

Shudde Fath, the longest serving member of Austin’s environmental community, died Friday at the age of 106. She was a committed and vocal member of the city’s Electric Utility Commission for 40 years, as the utility noted in a Facebook post.  She retired from the commission at 101 following a stroke.

Fath was well known as a leader in the Save Barton Creek Association, serving as the group’s treasurer for nearly 30 years. The Texas Legacy Project also honored her with a lengthy interview and review of her service to the community. Her many awards and honors are too numerous to mention.

In 2011 Fath and her daughter, Betsy Fath Hiller, compiled a book detailing reports from the Bastrop Advertiser during World War II. In 2017, the pair put together a book of never-before-seen photos by acclaimed photographer Russell Lee as he accompanied Fath’s late husband, Conrad, on a boat trip from New York City to Texas.

Friends and loved ones will celebrate Shudde’s life at 2 p.m. Sunday at Weed-Corley-Fish, 5416 Parkcrest Drive.

In Fact Daily interviewed Fath in 2011. At the time, she was still active in various organizations and environmental causes. We’ve edited and reprinted that article, which was written by Bill McCann, below.

Shudde Fath: Continuing the good fight at 95

Shudde Bess Bryson Fath, grande dame of Austin citizen activists, is a case study in longevity and perseverance when it comes to life and electric rates. 

During the past 40 years, Fath has been in the middle of many landmark battles over energy and the environment. She spoke up for Barton Springs where she swam for many years, and with her daughter, removed illegal signs tacked to utility poles. She campaigned to get environmental and neighborhood candidates elected to the City Council. But she is best known for her role on the Council’s advisory Electric Utility Commission, where she has used her accounting experience to look out for residential and small business customers. Her 34-year tenure on the EUC is unmatched in Austin city government.

Fath also measures longevity in other ways. She was married to businessman and activist Conrad Fath for 52 years before his death in 1990. She has lived in the Zilker neighborhood for 60 years. She worked more than 42 years at the former Texas Employment Commission.  A board member of the Save Barton Creek Association since 1981, she was its treasurer for 29 years until this year.             

At 95, Fath may have slowed down, but her mind is still sharp. And she thinks she has enough energy for at least one more good fight – over Austin Energy’s planned rate increase, which she fears may fall most heavily on residential and small business customers. Electric rates first riled her in the 1950s, helped propel her into community activism starting in the 1970s, and over the years earned her the respect of community, business and political leaders alike. 

Her volunteer work has earned her numerous awards. She has an 83-acre tract of city water quality protection lands named for her as well as a conference room at Austin Energy’s offices in the Town Lake Center. And she has her very own designated space in the center’s parking lot for her 27 year-old station wagon.   

To learn more about this Austin icon, In Fact Daily spent several hours talking to her recently about her life and the politics of electricity in Austin.

Early days

Fath, one of six children of Lily and Dr. J. Gordon Bryson, was born in Bastrop in 1916, a year before the U.S. entered World War I. Her parents were active in the community. Her father was a family doctor who started the first hospital in Bastrop. He was elected mayor twice and was president of the school board. 

She loved athletics and was particularly good at tennis. There were 18 students in her Bastrop High School graduating class. She was the valedictorian.

She graduated with highest honors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1937 with a business degree, and in 1938 was hired at the Texas Employment Commission. She retired as a chief accountant in 1981, the year after she won a major out-of-court settlement with the commission over sex discrimination. In 1938 she married Conrad “Connie” Fath, whom she had met at UT. They moved to the Zilker neighborhood in 1951, the year their daughter Betsy was born. 

Connie was an entrepreneur and fishing aficionado. He sold fishing gear and bait and later operated an Evinrude marine dealership on Barton Springs Road. She kept the books. Fath recalls that she first got upset about electric rates in the mid-1950s, after they installed air conditioning at Connie’s business for the first time. 

“When I was doing the books, I noticed that the electric bills were going up. So I called the utility,” she said. “That’s when I learned that the big boys got cheaper rates than the little guys. The same wires that went by our shop also went downtown where they were getting the cheaper rates. I thought that was unfair.”

In 1973 she read about a proposed electric increase that would add to the burden on residential customers. She began advocating for flat rates for all customer classes, even taking out a small ad in the newspaper. 

By 1975 Fath had gotten enough attention that Mayor Jeff Friedman appointed her to his Mayor’s Commission on Electric Rates. Two years later, Mayor Carole McClellan, who had defeated Friedman, appointed her to the new Electric Utility Commission, created from a recommendation by the mayor’s commission. Fath recalls that outgoing Mayor Friedman had four appointments to the EUC and McClellan (now Strayhorn) had five. The City Council years later changed the EUC from nine members to seven, where it remains today. 

“We had staggered terms so we had to draw lots for one- or two-year terms,” she said. “I was sitting next to Peck Young. He drew a 1 and I drew a 2. We didn’t say anything to one another. We just switched numbers. We knew that McClellan might appoint me again, but she would never appoint Peck, who had worked on Friedman’s campaign.” 

Young, then a political campaign consultant, later became chair of the EUC and was one of Fath’s favorite cohorts during her 34-year tenure. “Peck liked to wisecrack, but he understood the politics and he was so smart.”

Landmark campaigns

Electric rates stayed on the front burner, and then caught fire in 1980, when a group of activists plotted to make rates a political issue.

“I remember that a bunch of us sat around a metal table on Sunday afternoons at the ACORN office on West Mary Street to plan a public strategy over rates,” she said. “There were Teresa Reel, Jack Jackson of ACORN, Larry Deuser, Peck Young, Ruby Goodman, Connie and me. Through Council Member Richard Goodman, we got the utility staff to run various rate studies. We had this long list of proposals and settled on Proposal 7 as the fairest.” 

They started up an organization called the RATERS Coalition, for Reform Austin’s Terrible Electric Rate Structure. Connie Fath was chair. They got thousands of signatures and the endorsement of 61 organizations for Proposal 7, which was innovative because it included a “lifeline” rate in which customers using 500 kilowatt-hours a month or less paid a lower rate. 

They also got a public hearing before City Council.  At the hearing, Connie Fath stood up before a packed house and started reading off all of the groups that supported Proposal 7. “Every time he read a name, there was wild cheering and you could see that Mayor McClellan was having a fit. We knew we did not have the votes, but we got public attention.” 

The electric rate issue was not the only big battle local activists were engaged in. The community was split over Austin’s involvement in the South Texas Project nuclear plant, going back to 1973 when voters narrowly approved the city’s participation to the tune of $161 million. After that vote, critics got the issue back on the ballot in 1976 and in 1979, but both times voters decided against selling the city’s share of the project. 

Meanwhile, local citizen activists mapped out a major campaign to get their candidates on the City Council. Working through an informal group called the River City Coordinating Council that met monthly in the Faths’ living room, they plotted strategies to elect like-minded people. The 1981 Council election was a turning point for the city, Fath says. While McClellan beat Bob Binder, whom the activists supported for mayor, the majority of the candidates that they were supporting won, including Roger Duncan, Larry Deuser and Charles Urdy. John Treviño and Richard Goodman, whom they also backed, were reelected. 

Over the years the question of what is the relative cost to serve each customer class has been the big issue on rates, Fath says. “It seems we have fought over cost-of-service methodology forever. But in the end it is a political decision and the big guys usually win.”

Asked why she continues to keep at it, Fath recalls her recent invitation to speak to a University of Texas graduate social work class that was hearing from senior citizens.  “When it was time for me to talk, my message was basically that you’ve got to give a damn about something – and I still give a damn.” 

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