Melody Anne DeMeritt spent half of her 70 years on a hill in Morro Bay in a 100-year-old house. You may recognize her name from the four years she spent on the Morro Bay City Council, the three decades she spent teaching English at CalPoly, or the 50 years she spent actively working for the environment. It wasn’t just environmental lip-service and meetings, but literal on the ground picking up trash for Beach/Creek Clean Up Days, and along Highway One and the Sandspit for Morro Bay Beautiful.
Reflecting on her untimely and impending demise, Melody wrote, “Obits make a big deal out of a person’s occupation…. when I look back at my life those are not the memories that call to me. It’s the adventures I have had around the world.”
Her top three adventures were climbing up to Dixie Pass in SE Alaska with a 50-pound pack through grizzly territory, touring Croatia and Bosnia solo, and riding 3 hours in a beat-up Mercedes-Benz taxi across Morocco.
Her spunkiness and sharp intellect are sorely missed, as well as her advocacy for limiting human damage to Mother Earth. Thank you, Melody.
