Betty Wisdom, a longtime New Orleans civic leader who played an important role in many civil rights and philanthropic efforts and was a key figure in creating the nationally acclaimed Audubon Zoo, died Saturday morning at Ochsner Medical Center of complications from cancer. She was 76.

A founder of the Alliance for Affordable Energy and a longtime leader of organizations such as the Audubon Park Commission and the League of Woman Voters, she also was active in efforts to integrate the city's public schools in the 1960s and in many cultural organizations.

Because much of her work was behind the scenes, Ms. Wisdom was not well known to much of the public, but she was awarded The Times-Picayune's Loving Cup for 1994 in recognition of her wide-ranging efforts to improve the lives of New Orleanians.

Born Mary Elizabeth Wisdom, but always known as Betty, she was a lifelong resident of New Orleans.

She attended Isidore Newman and Country Day schools in New Orleans and the National Cathedral School, a boarding school for girls, in Washington, D.C., before entering Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She left after three years for a short-lived marriage.

As the daughter of William B. and Mary Freeman Wisdom, she was an heir to the Freeman family fortune, which stemmed from interests in Delta Airlines and the Louisiana Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

Civil rights work

Ms. Wisdom began her role as a civil rights activist in the 1960s. Then working as a writer and broadcaster for WNPS, the Orleans Parish School Board's radio station, she quit her job because it was illegal to work for the school system while advocating for desegregated schools.

She testified before the Legislature, protesting efforts to close the city's schools rather than integrate them, and was a board member of Save Our Schools, which worked for peaceful integration of the schools.

With other members of the group, she would personally escort the few white children whose parents kept them in the city's first two integrated schools during those volatile years between their homes and the schools, sometimes braving the invective and threats of angry white crowds. She continued that role until federal marshals took over the task.

Her civil rights activism didn't end then, said her sister, Adelaide Wisdom Benjamin.

In fact, Ms. Wisdom's family was steeped in civil rights, Benjamin said. "You can't really pick out any one of us and say that we're not," she said.

Her uncle, John Minor Wisdom, was a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which issued many rulings that helped end segregation in New Orleans schools and throughout the South after the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.

Her aunt, Rosa Freeman Keller, was a civil rights activist and strong supporter of Dillard University.

It was Keller whom Ms. Wisdom took after the most, Benjamin said. Ms. Wisdom "was for the person that was down that needed a help up," she said. "She was very, very heavily supportive of the black community and of the arts."

President Lyndon Johnson appointed her secretary of the Louisiana Civil Rights Commission in the 1960s.


Animal lover

An avid lover of animals, Ms. Wisdom's Uptown home was adorned with murals depicting various animals, said Ron Forman, CEO of the Audubon Nature Institute, the nonprofit group that runs Audubon Park, the Audubon Zoo and the Aquarium of the Americas for the city agency now known as the Audubon Commission.

It was Ms. Wisdom who first hired him and who played a key role in saving the zoo, Forman said.

In the 1970s, the zoo was in deplorable condition, widely described as an "animal ghetto," and many people wanted to close it. As chairwoman of the Audubon Park Commission from 1976 to 1981, Ms. Wisdom took on neighbors dead set against renovating the zoo and helped win public support for its transformation into a nationally acclaimed facility.

"She was one of the leaders who made the zoo what it is. She was one of the leaders who put it together," Forman said.

Ms. Wisdom spent 23 years in all on the Audubon commission. But, beginning in the 1950s, she held positions on dozens of boards and committees throughout the city.


Many other interests

She was a co-founder and chairwoman of the advisory committee of the Alliance for Affordable Energy, a consumer group that advocates for lower energy rates for New Orleanians.

In the 1970s, she served as president of the Independent Women's Organization and was a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the New Orleans Opera Association and the Trinity Educational Enrichment Program.

She sat on City Charter revision committees appointed by three mayors, Moon Landrieu, Sidney Barthelemy and Marc Morial.

"She always put herself second to the cause," said her nephew, Andrew Wisdom. "She always put other things ahead of herself and her own needs."

But Marjorie Gehl, a friend for the past 40 years, said Ms. Wisdom had a love for opera, travel, history and jewelry. "Her eyes would glow" looking through her jewelry box, Gehl said. Flowers were another love. "She got joy from just one bloom."

Books were a vice. She had at least 20,000 -- she left them all to Dillard University -- and had to have her house reinforced to hold them all, her sister said.

"She's the only person I know who read 'Gone With the Wind' in one day. And it drove me nuts. It took me a week to do it," Benjamin said. A photographic memory let Ms. Wisdom recall even the smallest details, Benjamin said.

For her decades of service to the community, Ms. Wisdom was awarded The Times-Picayune Loving Cup for 1994. The cup, awarded annually since 1901, recognizes citizens who have worked unselfishly for the community without expectation of public acclaim or material reward.

She was the fourth person in her family to receive the award, joining her grandfather, A.B. Freeman, and uncle, Richard W. Freeman, both philanthropists, and her aunt and mentor, Rosa Freeman Keller.

Ms. Wisdom, while delighted with the honor, said, "All of us were brought up in a family to believe in service. It was a duty as well as a pleasure. It's been a joyful thing. Though there have been awful times, times when you go home and cry into your pillow because things have gone so wrong. But you survive them."