Sheila Appleby, health activist, dies
Services
Visitation will be 6 to 9 p.m. today, and 1 to 4 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Friday at Crawford's Funeral Home, 495 N. Winton Road.
Services are at 10 a.m. Saturday at Spiritus Christi Church, 121 N. Fitzhugh St.
Sheila Appleby, health activist, dies


Justina Wang
Staff Writer



(January 10, 2008) — In the 15 years that Sheila Appleby headed the local chapter of the Epilepsy Foundation, she did her job with literal dirtied hands.

When the agency was starting a camp for epileptic children, the petite woman trudged through feet of snow in search of the perfect site. Then, she signed up as a camp counselor.

When the foundation held a mud volleyball fundraiser, she broke her wrist in a spirited game. When they raised money for United Way with a pie-throwing contest, she was the first to lick the cream off her face.

"She didn't just sit in her office in a suit," said Joan Powell, a former associate executive director under Ms. Appleby's tenure. "She was impassioned by people."

After nearly two years with Lou Gehrig's disease, the longtime advocate died Monday in her Rochester home. She was 63. Those who knew her recalled a lively woman who, in between championing for those with disabilities, danced at Bob Dylan concerts and fished in the Erie Canal.

"She could laugh a lot," said her husband Henry McCartney, a former Landmark Society president who often took his wife to explore historic buildings through upstate New York. "When she was serious, she never let situations get her down."

Ms. Appleby joined the Epilepsy Foundation in 1991 after seven years as executive director of Rochester's Advocacy Center.

Under her leadership, the foundation opened dozens of new programs and added 60 employees, while the budget ballooned from $450,000 to more than $4 million each year.

"There was no better advocate for those individuals than Sheila Appleby," said James Grossman, former chairman of the Advocacy Center and a longtime friend who accompanied Ms. Appleby and her husband on unsanctioned fishing trips in the canal. "She was very aware of all the people around her, of their suffering and their struggles."

"I think she truly touched the lives of so many adults and children because of the work that she did," said Epilepsy Foundation board member Stuart Gebell. In June 2006, Ms. Appleby was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease that weakens muscles and paralyzes the body. Open and calm about what was happening, Ms. Appleby retired five months later, and "there was never once a word of 'poor me,'" said Dan Meyers, president of the Al Sigl Center, an Epilepsy Foundation partner agency.

"I always knew there was fire in Sheila Appleby," Meyers said. "But her most heroic accomplishment was the graceful way she handled her illness and showed us all how to be the best person we could be."

Besides her husband, Ms. Appleby is survived by daughter Shelley McCartney of Rochester; son Robbie McCartney attending Brown University in Providence, R.I.; mother Helen Appleby of Florida; and brothers Charles and Barry Appleby, both of Florida.

JUWANG@DemocratandChronicle.com


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