Brenda Macbeth, City Hall Administrative Aide, Dies
Times Picayune 01-7-1996

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Brenda MacBeth, the City Hall employee whose battle with breast cancer
inspired colleagues to sign over their sick leave to her, died of the disease
Saturday at East Jefferson General Hospital. She was 52.

Her cancer was diagnosed in 1991. Because she had to spend so much time in
treatment - at East Jefferson and the National Cancer Institute - she used up
all her sick days, meaning she faced losing pay for living expenses, including
her health-insurance premium.

But Connie Thomas, Mayor Marc Morial's executive secretary, remembered a 1991
provision that lets city workers sign over sick time to a fellow worker. Each
municipal employee gets about 25 sick days per year, and Thomas encouraged
workers to give MacBeth some of the time they knew they never would use.

City workers responded, giving her a total of 47 days within a week after the
drive began.

The donations kept up. When MacBeth died, she still had slightly more than two
weeks of donated time, said Michele Moore, director of the city Office of
Communications.

"I've been very, very fortunate," MacBeth said last year. "I thought this was
a setback but it brought out all these wonderful things in people. You just
never know."

"She was highly respected among her colleagues, and she will be missed, both
for her sense of humor and her commitment to excellence," Morial said
Saturday.

MacBeth was born in Victoria, British Columbia, and graduated from the
University of British Columbia. In 1977 she moved to New Orleans, where she
was a secretary at the Royal Sonesta Hotel and an administrative assistant to
the architect August Perez III during the 1984 world's fair.

In 1986, Kurt Steiner, Mayor Sidney Barthelemy's chief administrative officer,
hired her as his executive secretary. She later was director of the Mayor's
Office of International Trade and Development and an administrative assistant
to Joseph I. Giarrusso when he was a City Council member and, more recently,
the city commissioner of criminal justice.

A memorial service is planned, but no date has been set. Arrangements are
being handled by Bultman Funeral Home.