Colorado park dweller Betty Dick dies (Fought Congress & Won)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.insidedenver.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5143511,00.html

Betty Dick, the feisty octogenarian who fought in Congress to keep her seasonal home in Rocky Mountain National Park, died Tuesday morning in Arizona, Rep. Mark Udall's office reported.

Udall took up Dick's cause as she fought to avoid a threatened eviction by the National Park Service from a home where she and her late husband had lived during the warm weather months since the 1970s.

She and her late husband had sold the land to the Park Service in the late 1970s, thinking that the agreement allowed them to reside there for the rest of their lives. But at the last minute, terms of the deal were changed to a 25-year lease, and nobody figured that Betty Dick would out-live the agreement.

Last year, the Park Service threatened to evict her from the land, and she turned to Udall and other members of the Colorado congressional delegation to help. Dick testified in front of U.S. Senate and House of Representatives committees, and after a legislative battle dragged on for about a year, she finally won the right to stay on the land, paying nominal rent, for the rest of her life.

Over the summer, Dick was in Colorado when she learned of a cancer diagnosis. She returned to Arizona, where she spent the winter, and she died Tuesday morning surrounded by family, said Udall spokesman Lawrence Pacheco.

Udall said he was "deeply saddened" by the news.