Friends and family gathered Sunday to honor the life of Shudde Bess Bryson Fath, one of Austin’s best-known and hardest-working environmentalists. She died at the age of 106 on Dec. 9 after more than 40 years of service to the community. One of her longtime friends, Bruce Elfant, who is Travis County’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, told the gathering that Shudde managed to cast her ballot early in the recent mayoral and City Council elections. Congressman Lloyd Doggett said Shudde and her husband, Conrad, supported him starting with his first run for the Texas Senate in 1972. He quoted a statement she made during an interview several years ago that briefly sums up her philosophy: “You can get discouraged by a lot of things, but if you keep on trying, good things will happen.”
Jo Clifton is the Politics Editor for the Austin Monitor. More by Jo Clifton