During her many years leading nonprofits and health care information agencies, Holly Ladd crafted phrases that combined compassion with calls to action, such as when the state’s Catholic bishops opposed a government plan in 1990 to distribute condoms to slow the spread of HIV.
“The open discussion of condoms may shock some,” she told the Globe at the time, while advocating for the initiative as executive director of the Boston AIDS Consortium. “The deaths of 30,000 Massachusetts residents will shock us all.”
When the situation dictated, she was just as comfortable with wit or a wisecrack, and she began aiming her considerable eloquence at her own life nearly 2½ years ago after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In a series of blog posts on hollyladd.tumblr.com, Ms. Ladd examined everything from the mundane to the philosophical.
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“I am surprised by how much I have laughed this last year, much more than I ever have, and that includes laughing at myself,” she wrote in October, about 14 months after the diagnosis. “I have a greater appreciation for showers, car rides, take-out, dog walkers, and, of course, vodka.”
Writing in her final months with a computer that let the movement of her eyes type messages she could no longer speak aloud or tap out with her fingers, she composed her last post in April. Ms. Ladd died June 23 in her Newton home of ALS, which is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She was 59.
“We spend our lives practicing the art of living, yet all the while we are tumbling toward death,” she wrote in that final post. “I find myself closer to the place and suddenly realize that I have no idea how to die. We never practice.”
Never a simple monologue, her blog became a conversation between Ms. Ladd and friends who responded to each post. Most signed their missives, while others simply left words of gratitude for her insights about topics that ranged from the plodding necessity of insurance forms to the spiritual quandary a nonbeliever faces when others offer prayers.
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“Can you borrow the faith of friends to carry you forward in the storm? I wonder,” she mused in January 2013, adding: “Does God care who is doing the heavy lifting? If you have faith. but I don’t, are your prayers wasted on me?”
Two weeks later, she wrote: “I think the right word is grace. I know that I had a notion of karma — thinking if I spent my life doing good I would ‘earn’ good — build some good karma. Good karma would keep bad things from happening. Now I see it does not work that way. Bad things happen. Grace is the ability to take on the bad things well, and karma is the gift of having people around who care and help. That might be the best a nonbeliever with good karma can hope for.”
Ms. Ladd spent her career building a healthy balance in her good karma account. Thirty years ago she was general counsel to the Boston Fair Housing Commission, which investigated and resolved discrimination complaints. Then she spent several years as executive director of the Boston AIDS Consortium before moving to the North American Family Institute in Peabody, a nonprofit that specializes in community-based care for children, youth, and adults with emotional or behavioral problems.
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In 1995, she took a job with Scheur Management Group in Newton, a health care consulting organization. Three years later, she joined an organization that is now FHI 360 and managed international health care projects. For a while she was executive director of SatelLife, which became part of FHI, and helped bridge the emerging digital divide by providing health professionals in less developed nations with online access to critical medical information. In January, FHI 360 cosponsored “the inaugural Holly Ladd Pioneer Award for the advancement of the use of mobile technology in low-resource environments,” the company said on its website.
Through the years she also was a Red Cross volunteer, dropping everything when called upon to lend assistance at a fire in Boston or a tornado in Oklahoma.
“She was passionate about making contributions,” said Joan Mikula, Ms. Ladd’s partner for the past 25 years. “She wanted to leave the world a better place.”
In November 2012, three months after her diagnosis, Ms. Ladd wrote an instruction to herself: “Make a difference — what is my legacy? I am inspired by how other people with ALS are spending their time. I need to get going. No white flags!”
The second of three children, Ms. Ladd was born in Orlando and grew up mostly in Boxford. After graduating from the University of Vermont and Suffolk University Law School, she was part of a women’s collective law practice, but was more interested in shaping public policy, Mikula said.
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“Clearly the influence and the power that she had within her sphere was pretty significant,” Mikula said. “She was able to problem-solve and work through most thorny issues through a combination of her brains and her humor. She loved people, and she was phenomenally funny.”
After the ALS diagnosis, Ms. Ladd took advantage of technological advances and recorded hundreds of phrases in her own voice through a system set up by John Costello, director of the augmentative communication program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Using the computer she controlled with her eyes, Ms. Ladd made her recorded voice call Walker, her beagle-basset hound mix, onto her lap while she was being interviewed for Al Jazeera America’s “TechKnow” program.
“The pleasure comes in seeing the reaction of others including my dog, to the familiar sound,” she wrote in January.
Still, she added: “I miss easy conversation. I miss adding an opinion, offering a correction or supplying a missing word. I miss the wise crack, the pun, and the punch line. I wish I had thought to record myself singing ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ ”
She recorded enough to banter and to slip in an occasional joke. “That was the machine talking,” she said at one point in the TechKnow report. “I take no responsibility.”
At another conversational juncture, Ms. Ladd’s voice piped in: “Please, just let me finish.”
“All right, go ahead,” Mikula said with a smile. “You always get the last word.”
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Among those recorded last words was Ms. Ladd’s voice saying gently: “I love you, too, Joanie.”
A service has been held for Ms. Ladd, who in addition to Mikula leaves their son, Michael Mikula of Watertown; her parents, David and Audrey of North Andover; a brother, David, of Hanover; and a sister, Victoria of Haverhill.
Before ALS narrowed the scope of her activities, Ms. Ladd was an enthusiastic golfer and a gifted photographer who captured the beauty of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Cape Ann on www.lensandlookingglass.com , her website.
In her blog, which Mikula plans to publish privately and make available as an e-book, Ms. Ladd wrote about her gratitude for her partner, for having a son who moved close by in her final months, and for friends who did not leave when a serious illness arrived.
“I’m surrounded and humbled by love and support,” she wrote in October. “I know I have written about this before, but I am blessed.”
Not long after being diagnosed, Ms. Ladd wrote: “I asked the kid from Compassionate Care ALS, when he came by the other night, ‘When do I get to feel sorry for myself?’ He said, ‘Not yet.’ ”
Though emotions waver during a lengthy illness, she wrote in her final blog post: “It has been a long cold winter, but the light is back, and there is, as always, the promise of spring. I’m still here. For now.”
Bryan Marquard
can be reached at bryan.marquard@globe.com.