This week we remember an activist like no other who worked tirelessly on behalf of all of us.

Congressman Sam Farr entered the following in the Congressional Record:

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor the memory of Martha Lois McGinnis Cameron Norton, or just simply Martha. It is with great sadness that I must share the news of her death last week at the young age of eighty-eight. Martha was one of those Americans who embodies the meaning of the word citizenship; who always worked to strengthen our democracy. Martha was born in 1922 in the little town of Washington, Iowa. She grew up on a farm and spent her childhood raising corn, tending hogs, and seeing to all the other chores of an Iowa farm girl. But being from a place called Washington, she had politics in her blood. As a child she saw both President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt speak during the 1932 presidential campaign. Four years later she worked her first of many campaigns when she helped re-elect President Roosevelt.

In 1945, following her graduation with a degree in chemistry from Monmouth College, Illinois, Martha became a research scientist for Shell Chemical Company in San Francisco. After several years, she returned to Iowa to take a position as the principal of Ainsworth High School. Following another stint as a research scientist, Martha settled on a career in teaching, which brought her to Monterey in 1962. And while Martha built a stellar career of teaching with the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, she is remembered by the wider world for her relentless political activism.

That activism began in earnest in 1946 when Martha joined a local campaign to save San Francisco's landmark cable car system. In 1956, she worked to re-elect President Eisenhower. In 1959, she helped run her father's successful write-in campaign to become Mayor of her hometown. Soon after her move to Monterey, Martha began working on numerous local election races, including one of my father's California State Senate re-election campaigns. In the late 60s, she worked on the coastal protection campaign that culminated in the voters' 1972 adoption of the landmark Coastal Act. In 1976, Martha worked as a precinct walker in Leon Panetta's first successful run for Congress. She also worked on Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign, coordinating more than 100 volunteers from their teens into their 70s.

Martha became a bedrock fixture of elected politics in Monterey County. Campaign after campaign, she made the calls, distributed the signs, gathered the volunteers, registered voters, got out the vote, and all the other indispensable grass roots tasks that make participatory democracy work. I know all this because she helped me in every one of my own campaigns going back to my service as a County Supervisor in the 1970s. I often said that she was my political mother.

Martha was also a tireless volunteer for many community causes. She devoted countless hours to many different boards, commissions, and other community organizations, including the MPUSD school board, the Highway 68 committee, the Toxic Waste committee for Fort Ord, several League of Women Voters committees, and local Democratic committees and clubs.

Martha is survived by her husband, Joe Norton; sons, Jeff Norton and his wife Dana; Christopher Norton and his wife Julie; daughter, Cheryl Herzog and her husband, David; and daughter-in-law Linda Cameron; as well as ten grandchildren; one great- grandchild; and her brother, Bill McGinnis. She was predeceased by her son, Bill Cameron, in 2007.

Madame Speaker, Martha Norton touched countless people through her service and good works. Our nation is poorer for her passing but enriched by the example she leaves behind.

Scenes from Martha's life can be found here.