Blacksburg Activist
Remembered by Many

Rosemary Bazuzi, 1947–2005

Rosemary Bazuzi used cloth bags for carrying groceries and refused to use paper towels.

People remember Rosemary Bazuzi giving them special gifts.

Those gifts ranged from material things, often from thrift shops she enthusiastically supported, to taking care of hospital patients, especially children.

“She was also one of the most health-conscious people I’ve ever met and an athlete,” said the Rev. Christine Brownlie, pastor at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Blacksburg.

Bazuzi rode in the multiple sclerosis bike fundraiser each of the past 10 years, she said. “We were stunned when she was diagnosed with lung cancer and died five days later.”

Rosemary Fuller Bazuzi, 58, of Blacksburg, died May 2 at Montgomery Regional Hospital. “She was a truly remarkable person who gave a lot to other people through her work as a nurse, a teacher, and also as a community activist,” Brownlie said.

Bazuzi was born in Birmingham, England, and never lost her accent. She was a tomboy who loved animals. By age 5 she was milking cows, and by her teen years she was a horseback-riding enthusiast.

She adopted animals from pounds, including her current dog, named Troika because he has three legs.

She played the piano and loved to sing. Polly Stimpson remembers sitting next to Bazuzi when they sang in Blacksburg’s Master Chorale. At the time, Bazuzi was a graduate student at Virginia Tech and working full time. ”She would always come in at the last minute out of breath,” Stimpson recalled.

Stimpson also remembers Bazuzi’s social activist side. “It was just a natural extension of who she was.”

She attended Rockford College in Illinois and transferred to Hampton Institute, where she earned a sociology degree. That’s where she met her future husband, Jack Bazuzi.

They lived in North Carolina and Florida. After their first child was born prematurely in 1971, she decided to study for an associate degree in nursing. The family was living in Saudi Arabia when she had their second child, again premature. She taught women in Saudi Arabia how to swim, and she also did things herself, such as driving a car — forbidden to women in that country.

“And no burkas for Rosemary,” Brownlie said. “She would wear a hat and long sleeves when she went out, but she believed that sunshine was good for the body and that Saudi women suffered from a vitamin D deficiency.”

She worked for the Virginia State Library and moved to Blacksburg when her husband took a job at Virginia Tech. The marriage ended a few years later. Rosemary Bazuzi entered Radford University and earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing.

She met Carl Virgin when she began attending the Unitarian Universalist church, and they became partners for the last 10 years of her life.

She changed the life of a boy named Caleb Thomas, born with serious disabilities, working with him as a nurse, and determined he would lead as normal a life as possible.

“She was an angel,” said Brenda Thomas, Caleb’s grandmother. “Caleb will be 11 years old June 12, and she came into his life when he was maybe 3 or 4 months old.”

When he went to school, she got the job of being his nurse. When his folks moved to Richmond, she got the job of working with him in the school there and commuted to Richmond at the start of each week and returned on weekends.

A supporter of low-cost housing and a house fixer-upper, Bazuzi led a successful fight to block a parking lot that would have encroached on her and Virgin’s neighborhood on Progress Street. Because of her concern for the environment, she reused cloth bags for grocery store shopping and refused to use paper towels.

“She was always giving things away,” said Tatiania McKagan, who came here several years ago from Russia. “She tried to find the right person for the things she had.”
Published in the New River Current section of the 29 May 2005 Roanoke Times. Written by Paul Dellinger
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