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The Indiana Daily Student

Instructor and environmentalist lived life of sustainability and community action

Lucille Bertucio participates the Park(ing) Day enet on Sep, 22, 2012. Bertucio was a presdient of the Center for Sustainable Living in Bloomington. She invovled environmental activities for the community. She died Feb. 27, at the age of 80.

Lucille Bertuccio’s observations of nature began from the time she was a young girl living in New York watching dandelions grow between the cracks in the sidewalk.

Her interest in natural life led her to a career as a naturalist for New York’s city parks, before she moved to Bloomington in 1988, where she became a leader in sustainable practices and environmental education.

After moving to be closer to her family during cancer treatments, Lucille Bertuccio, 80, died Saturday in her daughter’s home in Portland, Oregon. Bertuccio will have a green burial near a meadow, said Jeanne Leimkuhler, a close friend of Bertuccio’s.

To those who knew her, Bertuccio was artistic, creative and feisty. She did not own a car, tried to eat only local organic food and walked everywhere she went.

“She did not compromise very often,” Leimkuhler said in an email. “She was a fierce protector of the natural world and she pushed everyone around her to rise to a higher level and do the right thing.”

Raised in New York, Bertuccio moved to New Jersey when she married her husband Tom Bertuccio, graduated summa cum laude from Trenton State College and raised two daughters.

She moved to Bloomington in 1988 after her husband took a job as an engineer 
in town.

With signs in her yard reading “Monarch way station,” “Pesticide-free zone” and “Certified Wildlife Habitat,” Bertuccio’s home in Bloomington serves as an example of her efforts to promote local sustainability, said Maren Pink, another close friend.

“Anyone walking by her house and garden will see that she lived her words,” Pink said in an email. “It is an oasis, an urban food-producing garden and a refuge for native wildflowers and home to urban wildlife and pollinators.”

Bertuccio co-founded the Center for Sustainable Living and the Grow Organic Educator Series in Bloomington. She was also an adviser to the Bloomington Organic Gardeners Association.

“She had no problem always speaking up for the little things that didn’t have a voice,” CSL president Rhonda Baird said.

She said Bertuccio would often ask, “What about the insects or what about children or what about these little plants that no one else is paying attention to?”

As a part of the CSL, Bertuccio worked with the Habitat Stewards program to help promote the creation of wildlife habitats in backyards, school grounds and church properties across 
the city.

The Habitat Stewards’ efforts led Bloomington to be designated a Community Wildlife Habitat by the National Wildlife Federation.

“She had this energy for doing things,” said Martha Crouch, another of Bertuccio’s friends. “She didn’t just sit around talking about the problems of the world. She was a ‘let’s-do-something’ person.”

A long-time teacher, Bertuccio taught the environmental course L100: Edible Wild Plants at the Collins Living Learning Center, which allowed her students to learn about where plants grow and how they can be collected for use in recipes.

She also taught classes on environmental education and environmental attitudes.

“She was always teaching,” Crouch said. “She was generous with her knowledge.”

Bertuccio also belonged to a singing parody group called the Raging Grannies, 
Crouch said.

It was this sense of humor, along with her smile and her love of the earth that Bertuccio will be remembered for, Baird said.

“She loved all the creatures,” Baird said. “She really fought for and stood up for the well-being of every living creature, people included.”

Bertuccio wrote many essays about the Earth and sustainability that were compiled in a book, “Au Natural: Ruminations on Nature,” published in 2013. Her essays not only focus on various elements of wildlife, but also pointed to the human change needed to protect the environment.

Steven Higgs, an adjunct lecturer in the Media School, said he had known Bertuccio since the 1980s.

Higgs said Bertuccio’s “pure, uncompromising defense of the earth and the life that depends upon it” has inspired his own work as a reporter for the past 30 years.

“I always felt better knowing Lucille was around, keeping an eye on the institutions of power for us all,” Higgs said in an email.

CSL secretary Ryan Conway, who said he was inspired by Bertuccio to pursue his own sustainable living practices, said Bertuccio embodied commitment.

“Lucille’s entire life and lifestyle was one that was really committed towards helping Bloomington to become a more sustainable city and a more sustainable community,” Conway said. “Every action of her life exuded that.”

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