‘Classy lady’ and groundbreaker

When the Spokane Regional Health District celebrates its 35th anniversary this spring, it will unveil a wall of photos of its past health officers. Among the five pictures will be a woman with expressive eyes and a big heart.

Dr. Mary Luther, whose tenure as health officer spanned the 1980s, died Dec. 30 at age 87.

Luther arrived during a tumultuous time. The district’s employment system was shifting from being state run to locally controlled, causing turmoil among the staff. Luther took the helm and gave the district, at the time called the Spokane County Health Department, a shot of optimism.

“She was a great politician,” said her husband, Dr. Dean Luther. “(The district) was having troubles when she went to work there, and she totally turned it around into a coherent group of people.”

The role of health officer was the last leg of Luther’s career. She was a pediatrician and also taught courses at Sacred Heart Nursing School and the Intercollegiate Nursing School in Spokane.

Luther’s former colleagues refer to her as a “classy lady,” a phrase they interpret different ways. For one, she was an excellent hostess, tempting her successor, Dr. John Beare, to Spokane by putting him up at the Spokane Club and entertaining him at the Luthers’ Hayden Lake home.

She also was a gracious boss, said Elaine Engle, whom Luther hired as the AIDS coordinator in 1988. Engle recalled being invited to a formal event in Spokane, and Luther, knowing her employee had just put her husband through medical school, asked her if she had anything to wear.

” ‘Don’t worry. I have a couple of tops I can bring in,’ ” Luther told her, making good on her promise a few days later.

“In this little Safeway shopping bag, she drags in two of the most beautiful glittery tops. I thought, ‘I don’t dare wear something that gorgeous,’ ” Engle said. “That’s the giving heart that she had.”

Perhaps the trait that best demonstrates Luther’s class was her willingness to stand up for her principles. Luther tackled the AIDS issue during a time when the public’s fear over it was at a fever pitch. Engle recalls being introduced to people and putting her hand out to shake theirs only to watch them pull their hand back as she told them her position with the district.

Dr. Kim Thorburn, the district’s current health officer, credits Luther for building a strong HIV prevention program. Under Luther’s watch, the district and school leaders developed an AIDS/HIV curriculum. She reached out to people with AIDS, some of whom had had only negative encounters with government in the past.

“For someone to come in and say, ‘We want to talk to you about your drug use, about your behavior,’ instead of saying, ‘We want to slap you into jail’ … it was a very different hand reaching out to them,” Engle said.

Luther proposed a needle-exchange program to curb the spread of HIV among drug users, which Beare later implemented based on Luther’s groundwork.

With former Mayor Jim Chase, Luther attended events sponsored by the gay community, another taboo move at the time. Luther’s husband said she didn’t do it to be groundbreaking or to draw attention to herself; she simply was supporting people she’d come to know and like.

Beare added, “She was not particularly hung up by the gay issue or biases about people or their persuasions. If she saw a health need, she was right there.”

Luther is remembered for her personality quirks as well, including the stacks of paperwork she kept in her office.

“People compare me to her for our pile-file system,” Thorburn said. “A pile would get so high she’d put it on a chair and then wheel it into the office of the employee who that program was related to and say, ‘This is yours now.’ “

And although she was very serious about work, Luther had a good sense of humor.

“She had a little glimmer in her eye and a smile where she’d pucker up her lips and you knew something cute and funny was going to come out of there,” Engle said.

Dean Luther said the couple’s home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., is filled with memories of his wife. They met in medical school at Temple University and enjoyed 62 years of marriage. He called Mary his best friend and remembered her love of fly fishing, tennis, travel and the couple’s daughter, Joan Queeney Luther.

“She’d do anything for anybody,” Dean Luther said. “I miss her awfully.”