According to Jan Gordon, when people spoke about her mother, Leah Brazo, “from her early, early years, from what I’ve been told before I came to be, she was a woman who was always ahead of her time.”

Brazo, who died Nov. 1, was also active in her community.

The first woman elected to the Howard Township Park Board, Brazo, 90, of Niles, also served her community as a Howard Township trustee and on the zoning board of appeals. She later went on to be a candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives.

But before she entertained the idea of serving in the state House, she was making a difference in the lives of children in the school house.

“There are so many wonderful things about her,” Cass County Commissioner Johnie Rodebush said.

Rodebush, who said he had known Brazo for around 60 years, remembers her beginnings as a room mother and a member of the Parent-Teachers’ Association at Howard Elementary School.

“Leah was always there to help with fundraisers,” he said.

The two friends didn’t always see eye to eye on certain issues — the school being one of them.

Rodebush was a supporter of having Howard Elementary School annexed into the Niles Community Schools district; Brazo didn’t agree.

But over coffee and a couple of conversations, Rodebush said he was finally able to win Brazo’s approval.

“She had a lot of spunk in her,” Gordon said, adding her mother was a woman “who believed you always gave back and give to others and got involved with your community.”

Those lessons were ingrained in her children.

Gordon, current Howard Township treasurer, can remember making homemade signs for one of her mother’s elections when she was a child — and when the time came, her mother showed the same support.

“She was very excited for me,” Gordon said of her own run for township office. “And I would have never had the opportunity to do such without the exposure we were given of service and being a part of the community.”

While Brazo made a difference in her own community through her political service and her involvement in education, she also delighted all who knew her with her talents as a seamstress. Gordon said her mother “would make as close to 200” lap quilts in a year, which were distributed to nursing homes in and around Niles.

“It just seemed like second nature for her to be involved,” Gordon said.

Brazo also had a strong interest in seeing the area’s parks maintained.

Active until the end, Rodebush said, Brazo was “a real friendly, outgoing person. I don’t thinks she ever met a stranger.

“The people that are the busiest — those are the ones you can count on,” he said.