Leelanau County, the Grand Traverse Region and the world lost a dear friend this week.
Leelanau Conservancy Board Vice President Julie Weeks passed away from brain cancer on Saturday, February 18th. (2017) She was 59. We grieve her death for so many reasons and will miss her laughter, her can-do attitude and her relentlessly positive outlook on life—even in the face of death. Our loving thoughts are with her husband, Walter Hoegy, her step-children and grandchildren, and her father, George Weeks.
Julie grew up in Leelanau County, attended the University of Michigan, and worked in statistical research for a number of years in Washington D.C. She was then called by The White House to work for the Small Business Administration as the Deputy Chief Counsel for Statistics & Research. Julie later founded and was CEO of a company called Womenable. She traveled the world helping to foster women’s entrepreneurship in places like Rwanda, Vietnam and India. But there is no place on earth that Julie loved more than Leelanau.
Super Volunteer
Julie and Walter have been longtime Conservancy supporters. We grew closer to Julie when she answered a call for a video volunteer. We needed someone to do what our staff could not manage at the time—to take a class offered by Land Information Access Association, and to learn how to shoot and edit short videos. Julie rose to the challenge and, over six years, put together 22 beautiful “Why Leelanau ” videos for the Leelanau Conservancy, utilizing hundreds of photos submitted by other volunteers. She knew that people pined for our unique peninsula, and her themed videos connected over 25,000 viewers to everything from Leelanau sunsets to winter scenes to beaches. She singlehandedly brought so many people closer to the Leelanau Conservancy, by bringing Leelanau to them through her videos. In 2011 she joined our Board of Directors. She was, in a word, a doer—and a great communicator.
A Joy and an Inspiration
Said Tom Nelson, the Conservancy’s Executive Director, “Julie was very dear to us. Everything she did, she did from the heart, and she applied her brilliant and creative mind to everything as well. From conserving the peninsula’s natural beauty, to mentoring women entrepreneurs, to trying to find housing solutions for the people who work so hard to make it here. In a word, she truly loved our Leelanau community, both people and place, and she lived her convictions with an ever-present generosity and warmth. Julie was a joy and an inspiration to all of us. We simply adored her and will never forget her.”
Posted Feb. 21, 2017
Fellow Board Member Larry Mawby wrote this lovely poem about Julie:
With no splash, silently
slipping beneath the surface
of the Big Lake, Julie leaves us.
We stand on the shore,
looking out over the water;
left behind, aching.
At our feet, we see in
the sand her footprints
entering the cold welcoming lake.
Now a wave erases –
we keep only the memory
of her feet on the beach.
It is enough, it must be enough:
she has gone out of here &
into every where and when.
We remain on the beach,
collecting pretty stones
washed by the water.
Stones we imbue with
her memory, our solace.
And then we realize
these flat stones are
perfect skipping stones,
and we fling them across
the water’s surface,
laughing with Julie at
the perfect ending.
Larry Mawby
