Lillie A. Estes was a force of nature. There is just no other way to say it.

She arrived in Boston in 2017, long before I began writing “Motherlove,” my collection of short stories including “Ruth,” inspired by her. She came to Harvard University to give a talk on being a community strategist. At the time, I didn’t know what that meant, but as she shook her dreads at those wide-eyed Harvard students, I began to understand. Lillie did exactly what she was telling us to do: Embrace your community and fight like hell for it.

At one point, she silenced the room: “In Virginia, someone would have to work 128 hours per week at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent. Do you have any idea what that would cost in Cambridge?”

Lillie lived in poverty and by embracing her community, she uplifted the poor. She refused to move out of her public housing complex, even knowing the life expectancy there was 63 years, the lowest in Richmond. She knew too, that according to a Virginia Commonwealth University report, in a suburb just five miles away, people were living 20 years longer.

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a privileged community where my family moved three times to what they felt were better neighborhoods. Wouldn’t everyone want to move from one neighborhood into another if they’d have a better standard of living?

Lillie preached: if pushed out by redevelopment, residents in her neighborhood would have been forced into more poverty. Instead, by insisting money get poured into her community of Gilpin, she insisted on its growth. She also insisted that re-employment, education, and other opportunities go to public housing residents; that residents have a voice in decisions regarding their housing, and that consensus be part and parcel of the process.

She knocked on doors to persuade people to join her. She went to city council. She wanted children in public housing to have a garden, so she helped create one. She believed film could embolden her community’s vision, so she put on a film festival, one that educated as well as entertained, reflecting hot-button issues that she felt needed addressing — education, public safety, whole body well-being, transportation, housing, wealth creation, and job building.

Lillie was the real deal. When one of her two sons was murdered in 2010, three days before his 24th birthday, and the judge acquitted the young man who residents of Gilpin believed had killed him, Lillie was not driven by revenge or fury. Instead, she said to reporters, “I’m praying that the young man I just saw in court will tell the truth someday about what happened.” She refused to dwell on the fact that her son’s killer lived near her. To Lillie, he was a human being who had made a grievous mistake.

Lillie knew her worth. She won award after award for her work, but was never afraid to talk to her heroes. She worked with the richest people in Richmond and was just as comfortable talking to the man who drank his lunch from a brown paper bag. To Harvard she would have said, “It was a damn shame” it took that school so long to recognize her.

So Lillie and I became friends. We presented together at conferences. We talked every few days on the phone. We’d tell each other “I love you” at the end of our calls. Phone calls that might begin with “Jean, I’m on the floor on the yoga mat.” “Jean, don’t get me started.” “Sistah Jean, how are you this fine Tuesday and don’t for a minute tell me you not available when I call.”

When she wore a scarf I gave her to a Virginia Poverty Law Center Gala, she sent me a picture. She is standing with a friend in front of photographs of people honored at the gala, but never mentioned she was an honoree. “Cute picture, I guess,” was all she said.

Because she taught me something pure about fighting for what is right, Lillie’s death diminished me. Because her life expanded me, she made her way into “Ruth.”

Like Lillie, my character Ruth fights for her community and helps a man on the street when his child has been swept up in a raid. Raids happened regularly in Lillie’s neighborhood, and she told me how she’d work to get folks out of jail. Ruth also aims to get a neighbor out of jail, in spite of her own weariness and poor health, no matter that every step is an uphill battle in Springfield, Massachusetts, a tough town beset with hard-luck stories.

While Lillie lost a son, Ruth has a son in prison. Most people do not realize there is enormous loss there as well, and that mothers whose children are behind bars suffer – often for years without their child – and not because of anything they did to put him in prison.

I have saved hundreds of Lillie’s text messages. Ruth would not have used emojis like Lillie did, and she would never have heckled me, something totally natural for Lillie. But Lillie’s phrasing, at once full of heart and straight talk, “Sistah Jean, are you woke and able to listen AND occasionally able to speak in a CALM voice to me?” got translated into Ruth-speak.

Because of Lillie, I was able to write Ruth.

On my desk, I have Lillie’s photo. She smiles at me from the front of her Homegoing Celebration program. After I wrote “Ruth,” I went back to read through the program which tells the story of her 59 years and shares highlights of her good work. I discovered a forgotten fact about her. Mothers for Justice and Equality, founded in Boston and now a national group dedicated to ending neighborhood violence, had given her an award. She was honored in 2018 as “A Mother of Courage.”

Nothing could describe her better.

And just like Lillie, Ruth would have smiled, graciously accepted the award, and then said, “Let’s get on with it.”

Jean Trounstine is a Boston-based writer (“Shakespeare Behind Bars,” “Boy with a Knife”), professor, journalist and social-justice activist. She writes for the Boston Institute of Nonprofit Journalism about all things prison and parole. “Motherlove,” her short-story collection, was published by Concord Free Press in March 2024. Lillie Estes would’ve turned 65 today on Aug. 6, 2024.