Dagmar Bubriski, 84
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Dagmar Bubriski, 84, Northern Berkshire community activist, commentator, columnist, radio host, gadfly and energetic proponent of civic engagement, died of complications from Alzheimer's disease just past the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, May 10, 2011, at Sugar Hill Senior Living Community in Dalton, where she had been a resident for the past year.
Known throughout the area for her direct, sometimes acerbic and witty, critiques of institutions she found overly bureaucratic, self-important and pompous, she relished a bit of hyperbolic prose and always let her audience know exactly where she stood.
Beginning in the early 1970s, her regular columns in local newspapers often focused on women's rights and the need for women to assume more independence and power, especially economic power (an issue she wrestled with as a young widow with four children). A passionate advocate for historic preservation with a fierce devotion to her ideals of beauty and to decidedly traditional architecture, she became an outspoken critic of Williams College. Her printed articles and appearances at town meetings and forums irked some but delighted many.
She produced and hosted a series of popular weekly radio programs from 1972 through 1980 for the former WMNB and WGRG. "Emphasis Women!" the first program of its kind in the Berkshires, profiled and interviewed notable women in the work force and featured interviews with, among others, a young Martha Coakley, then a Williams College student, now Massachusetts attorney general. "Women Unlimited" followed in 1975 on WGRG; and from 1978 to 1980 she hosted "The Berkshire Job Profile."
A passionate advocate for historic preservation, she helped lead fights, though ultimately unsuccessful, to preserve the Williamstown Opera House, Van Rensselaer House, and various other properties owned by Williams College. When, during the construction of the Bronfman Science Center next door to her Hoxsey Street home, a blast sent boulders hurtling through her dining room windows, she stepped up to challenge the college on matters of civic responsibility â€' and, thereafter, she spoke tenaciously for many local residents not affiliated with Williams in articulating points of view in town-gown issues over the ensuing decades.
Born in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1927, daughter of Ernst and Elsa Weissman Neuburg, she graduated from Yonkers High School in 1944 as class valedictorian, and received a full scholarship to Mount Holyoke College, where she majored in art history and psychology and graduated in 1948.
She married the late Stanley Bubriski of Housatonic, an electrochemical engineer with the former Sprague Electric Co., in 1949. They moved to Williamstown in 1952.
Mrs. Bubriski worked in the education department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and was a docent for many years at the Clark Art Institute. She was a frequent columnist in the North Adams Transcript, The Berkshire Eagle and The Advocate newspapers. From 1978 until she sold the business in 1981, she founded and ran an employment agency in Williamstown, The Job Market. A firm believer in full employment for all, especially women, she proudly listed on her resume among all of her professional experience "Home Executive - total family management since 1965" (the year her husband died in a plane crash leaving her with four young children). Each of her children subsequently went on to college, graduate school and successful professional careers of their own.
Long involved in politics, she was elected to several terms on the Williamstown Elementary and Mount Greylock Regional High school committees. She was president of Northern Berkshire Community Action from 1975-77. In 1976, she was the first woman to ever run for state representative from the Berkshires. Running against an incumbent, she lost by a handful of votes. She was appointed by Gov. Michael Dukakis to the Governor's Commission on the Status of Women in 1978.
Her many appointments and elected offices, beginning in the 1950s, included president of the Williamstown League of Women Voters, president of the Mount Holyoke Club of Berkshire County, board member of Northern Berkshire Mental Health Association, president of the Mount Greylock Regional High School branch of the American Field Service, president of the American Association of University Women, member of the Williamstown House of Local History, chairman of the Williamstown Historical Commission, and member of the Williamstown Democratic Town Committee from 1960 through the early 2000s.
She leaves three sons, Mark Waldo Bubriski of Mission Viejo, Calif., Peter Dwight Bubriski of Williamstown, and Kevin Ernest Bubriski of Shaftsbury, Vt.; her daughter, Wanda Anna Bubriski of Branford, Conn.; her sister, Nadine Neuburg Doughty of Evanston, Ill., and four grandchildren.
Her brothers Waldo, Gerald and Hugo Neuburg predeceased her.
FUNERAL NOTICE — A memorial service for Mrs. Bubriski will be held at First Congregational Church in Williamstown at a date to be announced. Flynn & Dagnoli-Montagna Home for Funerals, Central Chapels, 74 Marshall St., North Adams, is in charge of arrangements.