Remembering Polly Armstrong, former Berkeley council member and CEO of Berkeley Chamber

Polly Armstrong, a force to be reckoned with and a rare character, died on Sunday, Feb. 9, at the age of 79, from some combination of Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer.

Patricia (Polly or Patsy) Churchill was the third child of Lucille Montgomery of Evanston, Illinois, and Walter Buena De Mesquita (changed to Churchill) of Arnhem, the Netherlands.  Polly formed a winning combination of her parents’ wildly different characters — she possessed Lucille’s love of words and books, her kindness and her political advocacy, and Walter’s giant personality, his love of storytelling and parties, and his interest in markets. 

Polly grew up in Jacksonville and Gulfport Florida. At age 16, she met the man who was to become the love of her life, after John Armstrong from Wheaton, Maryland was becalmed on Boca Ciega Bay in his small sailboat and sculled it to the “only dock with a light on.” The next day, she made him a cheese sandwich and he invited her sailing, beginning 63 years of adventures together. After Boca Ciega High School, Polly attended Allegheny College in Pennsylvania. Polly and John married in 1965, and Polly completed her bachelor’s degree in political science at Eckerd College in Florida, while they lived in a small house in an abandoned orange grove, with a pet monkey named Hamlet.

The Coast Guard transferred them to Baltimore where Polly got a job interviewing applicants for public housing. In 1970, their first daughter Amy was born. Next, they moved to New Orleans, where their second daughter Amanda was born in 1972. Then they moved to Thibodaux, Louisiana, where they developed a group of lifelong friends with whom they enjoyed canoe trips, tennis, crawfish boils and great conversation. Polly took care of the kids and worked at the local radio station, KTIB (“your home in the country”), where she ran her own news and interview program

In 1978, they were thrilled to make their last Coast Guard transfer to California, where they bought a home in Berkeley. Polly became a Certified Financial Planner specializing in helping newly divorced or widowed women understand and manage their finances.

When the girls were in high school Polly began working as an aide to Berkeley councilmember Fred Weekes. After serving as an aide for Weekes and, later, council member Fred Collignon, she ran for City Council and won, then served on the council from 1994-2002. There, she developed a reputation for refreshing directness and reason. She refused to vote on national or international issues on the City Council, though she did gain national attention by proposing a humorous but pointed resolution to support Tinky Winky after Jerry Falwell warned parents about the Teletubby being a gay role model; she was quoted as saying, “When you see bigotry and self-righteousness out there you really need to stand up to it, even when it’s absurd.” 

Polly was proud of her role in establishing curbside plastics recycling, transit passes for students and a downtown Berkeley Arts District. She worked with council members across political factions to achieve policy benefitting the neighborhoods she represented, and was a force after the 1991 Oakland Fire, mediating neighbor disputes and hassling city bureaucracy to speed up the rebuilding process.

After retiring from the City Council, Polly took on the job of CEO of the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce, where she righted a struggling organization by recruiting many new members and successful fundraising. She greatly strengthened the voice of the Berkeley business community and was instrumental in getting multiple new businesses off the ground. Polly founded the Chamber’s annual “Berkeley Visionary Awards” and was a champion of Downtown Berkeley business.

Polly excelled at enjoying life. She and John attended countless concerts of blues, folk and country music, they flew more than once in John’s plane across the country, exploring as they went, they enjoyed the company of their many fine friends, they adopted and loved a long list of perfect dogs, they danced together even when no one else was dancing.

Polly was smart, opinionated and blunt, with biting wit, and was always the life of the party and a world class conversationalist. She proudly told her daughters and granddaughters that they “came from a long line of uppity women.” Polly’s grandmother pushed her children around in a pram in downtown Chicago in the 1920s, passing out birth control literature by Margaret Sanger, and Polly’s mother was president of the Florida League of Women Voters for three years.

Polly was a strict but kind and loving mom, who pushed her daughters to be strong and independent and live their lives to the fullest, to say “yes!” to new things.  She was a terrific, involved grandmother for 21 years to her four granddaughters, passing along songs and stories, taking the kids on adventures, teaching them manners and grammar, and loving them as completely as she loved her daughters.

Polly’s family imagines her drinking a cold gin and tonic with lots of ice, sitting under an umbrella on the beach, finally together with her mom whom she lost to breast cancer too young (and whom she missed for the rest of her life), her father, her friends who preceded her and all her dogs, and looking down with utter joy at the husband, friends and uppity women here on earth who miss and celebrate her.

Polly leaves her husband of 59 years, John Armstrong, her daughters Amy Lowell and Amanda Acheson, her sister Carol Churchill of Palm Springs, California, her nephews Robert and Michael Churchill, and her four granddaughters Lucy, Margaret, Susanna and Annie.