Viola “Vi” Quirion, 77, who died Sunday after battling cancer, was remembered Tuesday as a senior activist who made her mark in the fight for affordable prescriptions in Maine.

In 1999, Quirion was on “60 Minutes” while on a bus trip to Canada to buy prescriptions with the Maine Council of Senior Citizens. As a council member, she helped organize the bus trips.

In that same year, she was recognized by U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, for her work for affordable prescription drugs. “She never was on welfare, she never collected an unemployment check. She spends nearly a quarter of her $900 monthly income from Social Security on prescription drugs,” Allen said at a briefing on drug-coverage bills before Congress.

In 2000, she was featured in a “Time” magazine article about seniors who couldn’t afford their medicine.

In the first half of 2000, Quirion kept vigil at the State House to remind Maine lawmakers – who were also being pressured by pharmaceutical lobbyists – to vote for a bill to help lower drug costs.

And last year when the Bush administration proposed its Medicare bill, Quirion went to Washington to protest.

“I got a call from our press office. Either Newsweek or USA Today wanted to know: How would this bill affect Viola Quirion of Maine?'” Chellie Pingree, president and CEO of Common Cause, said Tuesday.

“She didn’t want to be in the spotlight, but she wouldn’t give up,” Pingree said. Pingree is a former state senator who sponsored “Maine Rx,” a bill to lower drug costs for those without prescription insurance, especially seniors on Medicare. Many helped make Maine Rx happen, and one of those was Quirion, Pingree said.

As the bill was debated, Quirion set up phone banks in her home. “She’d be in the State House halls every day,” Pingree recalled. “You’d see her with her two canes wearing her purple jacket” cornering legislators. Between her and the late John Marvin, then president of the Maine senior council, “you couldn’t say no,” Pingree said.

U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, D-Maine, who was a state senator working for Maine Rx in 2000, recalled Tuesday that Quirion’s “commitment to social justice and lowering the cost of prescription drugs was unparalleled.”

Calling her a “pioneer,” Rep. Allen agreed. “By helping to organize the bus trips to Canada that 60 Minutes’ and other news media covered, Vi was instrumental in bringing to national attention the pharmaceutical industry’s price gouging of American seniors,” Allen said. Along with the Marvin and Pingree, “Vi was a driving force behind enactment of the landmark Maine Rx,” he said.

Before becoming an activist, Quirion worked at the Waterville Hathaway shirt plant for 44 years before it closed in 2002, and was a member of the Maine AFL-CIO. Gov. John Baldacci recalled that Quirion was involved in efforts to keep Hathaway open and its workers employed. Baldacci praised her activism, saying she “was an individual who set a standard, a kind of a role model for us to follow.”

Quirion was born in Winslow. She was a resident at Mount St. Joseph Nursing Home when she died. A memorial Mass is scheduled for 11 a.m. May 1 at St. John the Baptist Church in Winslow.
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