CHEYENNE - Annette Edwards Aldrich was a 13-year-old school girl living in Florida when she first developed a distaste for social injustice.

At that time, in the 1930s, she noticed that African Americans were forced to ride in train cars separate from whites, and blacks had their own waiting rooms at doctors' offices. That didn't sit right with young Aldrich.

"I remember at that age that what was happening to the blacks was wrong, and something was very unjust about our society," Aldrich said in comments she recorded a few years ago for her church.

Aldrich, a longtime Cheyenne resident, died on Sept. 13 at the age of 85.

But her family and friends say her legacy as a fighter for justice and equality lives on, as do her efforts as a founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne.

Aldrich had a front seat to the Jim Crow South. Her grandmother was given a slave at birth and her grandfather was briefly involved with the Ku Klux Klan, her family said.

For a time, her mother and father employed an illiterate teen-age African American servant, Bessie, who entered the house through the back door and ate her meals on the porch.

Aldrich also noticed that some members of the church that her family attended held intolerant views toward blacks, and seemed to hold women to a different standard than men.

For example, she noted that some men in the church took their sons to brothels when they reached a certain age, while they ostracized women for any perceived sexual misdeed, said Aldrich's son, Andrew Aldrich of Cheyenne.

"The double standard to her was appalling," Andrew Aldrich said.

In the 1940s, while WWII was raging, Aldrich began to meet young servicemen from nearby military bases. The airmen explained that other parts of the country adhered to different social norms.

"By the time I graduated from college in 1946, I knew I could not work in the South," Aldrich said in the recorded comments.

She moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a home economist for Potomac Power and Light. She demonstrated electric kitchen appliances, which were just starting to become common in homes.

While in Washington, Aldrich became acquainted with the progressive social message of minister A. Paul Davies of All Souls Unitarian Church. Davies preached against racism and social prejudice, and the message resonated with Aldrich.

After six years in the nation's capital, Aldrich became burned out on the politics of McCarthyism and decided to move West.

Aldrich said she chose to move to Wyoming because of the state nickname, the Equality State, and because she had been enamored with western stories as a child.

The abundance of young men in Wyoming at that time may have also been a factor in the decision, said Aldrich's daughter, Adele Aldrich of Laramie.

Aldrich found that Wyoming didn't always live up to its name.

Not long after she arrived, her employer, Cheyenne Light, Fuel and Power, was forced to shop around for a venue that would allow an African American woman on staff to attend the annual Christmas party.

"Discrimination is not just in the South," Aldrich said in the church recording. "I've seen it in all parts of the country. Not just blacks, but all people of color and ethnic backgrounds."

In 1958, Aldrich married Dr. Alvin S. Aldrich, a young doctor originally from the Boston area who eventually served as chief of staff at the Cheyenne Veterans Administration hospital.

Their wedding took place in the home of former U.S. Rep. Teno Roncalio, D-Wyo., who was a friend.

"She came out West partly in hope of meeting and falling in love with a cowboy, and she met and fell in love with a proper Bostonian who was probably about as far from being a cowboy as you could get," said Rev. Suzanne Meyer, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne.

"It would be the equivalent of moving to Boston and meeting and falling in love with someone who was a rodeo performer," Meyer added.

The Aldriches had three children: Andrew, Adele and Amy Knowlton of Veteran.

Aldrich helped form the Unitarian Fellowship. It began as a children's Sunday school and eventually grew into the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne.

"She missed a church that had an unapologetic socially progressive stance," Meyer said.

Annette Aldrich had a love of water and of swimming, probably a result of her childhood in Florida, her family said.

She also loved to learn, but she suffered from dyslexia, which made reading difficult.

So she traveled the country with her husband after retirement, attending elder hostels, where she could learn through demonstrations and discussions, Andrew Aldrich said.

Aldrich was a longtime volunteer for Meals on Wheels in Cheyenne. Even when her memory started to fade in old age, she insisted on lending a hand with the program on Thursdays.

Aldrich's passion for social issues continued into her later years, as well.

In the recording she made for her church, Aldrich summed up what she had learned about social injustice during her life. She warned that the United States will never live up to its potential as a nation until people give up their negative beliefs about one another.

"Until we can overcome our prejudices against people of other races, nationalities, sex, color, religion, the sick and the handicap, we will never obtain the goals of our country of equality for all," she said.

Contact reporter Jared Miller at (307) 632-1244 or at {M7jared.miller@trib.com