From the Battle Creek Enquirer (follow the link for pictures):
Funeral is a celebration of Laura Spurr’s life
Trace Christenson • The Enquirer • February 28, 2010
Amid eagle feathers and flowers, mourners celebrated the life Saturday of Laura Spurr.
Speaker after speaker described Spurr, the chairperson of the Tribal Council of the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi, as determined and blunt but fair and always trying to help members of the tribe.
“She demanded respect for her people but was unassuming in going about that,” said Frank Ettawageshik, former Chairman of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians. “Laura went out and changed the world and she came home and changed the world.”
Spurr, 64, died Feb. 19 after suffering a heart attack while attending a conference in California.
She had been active in tribal leadership since 1999 and served as council chair from 2000 to 2001 and from 2003 until her death. She was a driving force in the 10-year-long process of approval and construction by the tribe of FireKeepers Casino in Emmett Township.
Ettawageshik said establishing the $400 million casino was a visible accomplishment, but it was merely a way to help members of the tribe, many who live at the Pine Creek Reservation near Athens.
“What I saw in Laura was someone who had vision,” he told about 450 people at the Athens Middle School gymnasium. “The casino was a tool to build wealth in our nations. What I admired was her vision for the future and her asking what are we going to leave for future generations.”
Growing up in Athens, Spurr graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in nursing. She and her husband Stephen, an economics professor at Wayne State University, lived in Grosse Point Park.
In a letter read to the audience by his sister Sophie Spurr, Stephen Spurr said his wife decided to work for the tribe rather than continue as a nurse. She drove back and forth to Athens and put in 60 to 70 hours a week.
She improved tribal government which was in a shambles, oversaw construction of new buildings including homes at the reservation and always advocated for jobs for tribal members.
She saw the casino as a way to help the tribe, her husband said.
“Her tribal members had nothing and they needed help now,” he said. “She gave her life for the tribe.”
Ro-Ann Beebe-Mohr, tribal council secretary, said “the great spirit sent her home to be in a better place because you need some rest. We will hear her voice whisper in the wind, ‘be strong’. I will think of Laura living in the hearts of those she has touched.”
Jim Dacey, vice president of gaming development for Full House Resorts, said he began working with Spurr about 11 years ago on development of the casino and said, “if you were a friend of Laura it was not an easy task.”
Their first encounter was when Spurr told him he was not needed at a tribal meeting to discuss the casino, but he said they then worked long and hard together.
“The tribe’s business was first and foremost in her heart, and her legacy is the lives she touches and the friends she made,” he said, before turning to Spurr’s family and saying, “thank you for sharing her with me.”
The ceremony, which Bill Vandegriff of Battle Creek described as a celebration of her life, was a blended service of Native American and Christian. It included a pipe ceremony led by Vandegriff. Members of her family prayed over bits of tobacco which was placed in a ceremonial pipe and then smoked as each participant allowed the smoke to wash over them.
Vandegriff also presented a tribal flag to the Spurr family.
Spurr will be buried in a family plot in East Alstead, New Hampshire.
Trace Christenson can be reached at 966-0685 or tchrist@battlecr.gannett.com.
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