Miami feminist fought tirelessly for women

Roxcy O’Neal Bolton, the founding mother of Florida’s modern feminist movement and a rambunctious, feather-ruffling presence on its civic and political landscape, died Wednesday in the city she championed and challenged for almost five decades. She was 90.

She died at Doctors Hospital in Coral Gables at 5:10 a.m., her son David said, in the same place where her children were born and where her second husband, David Bolton Sr., died. She had been sick for several years and hasn’t been able to eat much since August.

“She was a fighter to the end. Her body wore out. I can’t believe she hung on this long.” But that was Roxcy. Bolton will be buried in the historic City of Miami Cemetery near the grave of Miami’s founding mother, Julia Tuttle. Her epitaph will be simple: Her name, the dates of her birth and death, and one other word: Woman.

It is not enough. Mayor Jim Cason. “She was just a scrapper and a fighter through her whole life. She was refreshing, a terror in her time, and every community needs someone like a Roxcy Bolton to push back and make sure people are doing the right thing.” Distress — the first rescue shelter of its kind in Florida. In 1974, she opened the Jackson Memorial Hospital rape treatment center that bears her name.

A regular at Coral Gables City Hall until months before her death, Bolton held forth on local issues that included the relocation of sidewalk trees and the controversial placement of a Gables trolley station in a black neighborhood in Coconut Grove.

Mayors, commissioners, police chiefs and city managers sometimes welcomed — often suffered — her presence.

“They yell at me, ‘Sit down Ms. Bolton!’” she told the Miami Herald for a 2010 story about gadflies in the community. “I’m not a wimp.”

Of course not. Two strokes and two heart attacks robbed her speech of clarity so she powered through by writing out her thoughts in clear black ink on yellow legal pads or even paper plates. When moved to action, she would find her way to a lectern before a city commission, often unaided, catapulted by her determination.

“Roxcy and I had a very interesting relationship,” said former Gables mayor Don Slesnick. “She was always a person who spoke her mind and spoke vociferously when she expressed herself and would take issue with a number of things the city would do. Since I was in the middle chair as mayor, controlling the meeting, when she decided she wanted to express herself it came down to whether I was going to recognize her.”

It didn’t matter. She spoke.

Nevertheless, the activist and the elected official forged a bond. “She kept government’s feet to the fire about doing the right thing,” Slesnick said. “She was always opinionated but had opinions that were about trying to find the high ground on issues.”

Bolton’s death comes less than a week after the passing of “Coral Gables matriarch” Marlene Kerdyk and two weeks after former Wometco chief Arthur Hertz. Both have memorials scheduled on Thursday. “I would say in a week where we are saying ‘goodbye’ to Roxy, Marlene and Art, Coral Gables has lost a generation of people who made a difference,” Slesnick said.

Bolton is survived by daughter Bonnie Dee Bolton, and her sons David Bolton Jr., and Baron “Buddy” Bolton. She was predeceased by her son Randall Hart. Services are in the planning stages.