STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Elsie Owens, longtime health and civil rights activist and 2004 recipient of Stony Brook's "Distinguished Alumni Award for Public Service", has passed away after a long battle with heart disease. She was 77.

Owens was born in Abbeville, SC, and was raised on 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem, NY. In her early 20s she met Robert Owens, at a nightclub. The two married shortly afterward in 1950. Owens and her husband moved to Gordon Heights in 1959 and she immediately started fighting for her new neighborhood.

In 1959, she started a campaign in Gordon Heights to pave the roads and install streetlights and public water. In the late 1960s, Elsie focused her efforts on establishing a community health center in Coram to serve residents who could not afford private medical treatment (today called The Elsie Owens North Brookhaven County Health Center). While raising five children and continuing her community activism, Elsie found time to return to school, earning her Master's degree in Social Work from Stony Brook in 1978. Owens was also a 20-year president of the Brookhaven NAACP.

The recipient of numerous awards, including the National Association of Social Workers "Social Worker of the Year Award" and the 1991 "Woman of the Year Award" from the Town of Brookhaven, Elsie served on the President's Diversity Council. She was named President of the School of Social Welfare Dean's Advisory Committee in 1998 by Dean Frances Brisbane, and in 2000 she received the School of Social Welfare "Distinguished Alumni Award".