As a middle-aged woman, Liz Kruidenier turned a passion for constitutional law she developed through her involvement with the Iowa League of Women Voters into a career. It wasn’t until 1973 that Kruidenier, now 85, earned her law degree from Drake University. What she didsince then has enriched the lives of clients at Polk County Legal Aid and resulted in Iowa Supreme Court reversals. She was a partner in the Parrish Kruidenier Law Firm, and has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court. She continued to the end, in her personal and professional life, to champion the causes of social and economic justice, racial equality, women’s rights and access to education.

Below is a brief interview with Liz conducted by dsm Magazine prior to her passing on Oct. 19, 2011. Liz along with seven other of the metro area’s most respected men and women will be honored at dsm’s first Sages Over 70 on Nov. 8.

Mentoring and giving back

Kruidenier has spent much of her life giving to human rights and other causes. “People who have to work 60 hours a week to make a living don’t have the time to be involved in important community activities,” she says. But when “you have the time, energy and resources, it’s important to be active. The community gets the advantage of several points of view, and it enriches your own life to be involved.”

Most-often asked

“I’m asked about how I think I have been lucky,” Kruidenier says. “I was lucky to have a wonderful father. He was an intellectual, so I had the good fortune of growing up with his influence. I was lucky in my choice of a spouse (David Kruidenier, a former Des Moines Register publisher who died in 2006). I am lucky to have been very comfortable materially in my marriage, and David was kind and wanted the best for me always. He gave me great encouragement in whatever I was trying to do, especially when I decided to go back to law school.”

Most significant memory

“When I was 7, my 14-year-old brother died, and that affected our household for the rest of my life,” she says. “My mother never got over that. He died of cancer, and that was a very long process. He had been sort of my baby sitter; mother didn’t spend a lot of time taking care of me, and she became more withdrawn and cranky, maybe.”

Most significant thing to happen in city development

“My husband,” Kruidenier says proudly. “He had a great deal to do with building necessary buildings. Des Moines was just a big small town, not a bit sophisticated.”

She says her husband’s leadership was a clarion call that motivated others. “It’s been mostly people that have been the best thing to happen to the community,” she says. “Some of them wanted a more sophisticated town, and they helped to build it.”

Greatest professional accomplishment

“Making it through law school and passing the bar,” Kruidenier recalls, laughing. More seriously, “joining forces with Alfredo Parrish was very important,” she says. “I had worked for a while at Legal Aid and got a lot out of that, but I didn’t do any criminal work. I ran into Alfredo at Legal Aid in 1983, and that was a big boost to my career. We traveled around the state doing a lot of criminal cases, and that was fun.”

Person you’d most like to spend 10 minutes with

“I think probably with our president,” Kruidenier says. “I would tell him I think he is doing a great job, but he has got to be a little gutsier. I would tell him, ‘Don’t let the tea party get you down, because they are certainly trying hard to do that.’”