Words are our currency as journalists but they fail today. Our dear Sally, whose passion for social and economic justice infused the Pittsburgh local with an unassailable spirit, served as our vice president and as a tenacious, talented negotiator and in so many other ways.

Her gifts to us were many–her writing was graceful and so too was her life. She was as funny as she was fiery, as gentle as she was relentless in her pursuit of justice for journalists, women, minorities, the disenfranchised. She was a giving friend, a wonderful colleague, the definition of a responsible and effective union leader.;

I feel inadequate to try to define what she meant to us and, on a personal level, to me. She was my partner, my best friend, my confidant, my strength. It is difficult to imagine a world without her smile, her intelligence, her boundless energy, her loving friendship, her contagious blissfulness, her dogged determination. At her essence was a selflessness that was saintlike.

Sally would never stop fighting as long as she saw injustice. The world is a better place because of who she was and what she did in the brief time she was here.