Elizabeth Whithed Boyson, 42; worked for progressive causes

Elizabeth and Daniel Boyson had a way of marking Valentine's Day that would warm some grown men's hearts.

"Liz and I had a 15-year tradition of exchanging power tools," he said.

"We'd give each other power tools for Valentine's Day. And we kept it up until we couldn't think of any more power tools."

Elizabeth Whithed Boyson, 42, a former staff member with the activist organization Greenpeace, died of endometrial cancer April 19 at her Collegeville home.

Because the Boysons were frequently on the move, "we had a number of apartments over the years," Daniel Boyson said.

So besides buying power tools, "if it was a rainy weekend, we'd usually go to the paint store and pick out paint for a room to paint," he said. They didn't run out of rooms that need fixing up.

Born in DeKalb, Ill., Mrs. Boyson grew up in Philadelphia, graduated from W.B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences in 1984, and earned her bachelor's degree in plant and soil science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1989.

She and her future husband met in Amherst and, as Greenpeace staff members there in 1990, "used to go door to door, raising money and asking people to sign petitions," he said.

They moved to San Francisco and did the same job with Greenpeace there in 1991.

Then, Boyson said, his wife sold T-shirts for Greenpeace on Fisherman's Wharf before Greenpeace sent her in 1992 to organize its stores in Key West, Fla., and Provincetown, Mass. When she returned, they married in 1993.

Boyson said she got her shipboard credentials with Greenpeace - widely known for its waterborne protests - in 1994 on San Francisco Bay, in a protest of a nuclear-powered U.S. Navy ship.

Her husband explained: "We did not think nuclear reactors should be floating around in the ocean."

The incident did not result in an arrest, he said. She went into the bay "in a diving suit, and she treaded water."

Navy speedboats came close enough to splash her, he said, "but I do not hold that against them."

From 1995 to 2005, Mrs. Boyson was a customer-service supervisor with the San Francisco office of Working Assets, which, its Web site says, is a fund-raising organization for progressive causes.

When the Boysons returned to Pennsylvania in 2005, she was a customer-services manager for Sentry Surgical Supplies in King of Prussia and was a member-records supervisor with the Project Management Institute in Newtown Square from 2007 until a week before her death.

"She was one tough lady," her husband said.

Besides her husband, Mrs. Boyson is survived by her mother, Carol; a daughter, Kaitlyn; a brother, Douglas; a sister, Suzie Howard; and several nieces and nephews.

A life celebration is set for 1 p.m. Saturday at the Thomas Paine Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 3424 Ridge Pike, Collegeville.