Audubon Ohio mourns the passing of Cong. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.  We wanted to share the following anecdote that so amply demonstrates her remarkable character.

During the summer of 2007 we were running a free nature day camp for the children of Glenville at the Rockefeller Park Greenhouse in the heart of that neighborhood.  One morning in August Cong. Jones visited to meet with the children, ages 7-10, to get a sense of what they had been learning about birds and plants.

It was in many ways a typical congressional visit.  We scheduled it carefully with her staff.  On the morning of the visit, a staff member working advance arrived first, followed by the Congresswoman. 

When Cong. Jones arrived she immediately began to engage the children, asking them ever-more-complex questions about the birds in the neighborhood.  The children amazed her with how much they had learned during the summer.  Afterwards they crowded around, asking her to sign pictures of birds they had drawn, which she did with evident pleasure, ending with a group photo with the children and photos with the staff.  She was so pleased by what she saw that she later placed a statement about her visit in the Congressional Record.

But that is not the best part of the story.

The best part is that the next day, without any advance notice and without any staff, she returned to the camp on her own.  She had been growing some plants under grow lights in her home, and she brought them to the camp to distribute to the children because she was so moved by her experience of the previous day.  She did this without political motive, out of pure love for the kids.

She was such a special woman.  We are really going to miss her.