DETROIT -- Maryann Mahaffey, who se...

DETROIT -- Maryann Mahaffey, who serv upon the Detroit City Council for 31 years and was known as an advocate for the disenfranchised, dedicated to improving quality of life in the city, died Thursday. She was 81

M Mahaffey died at Henry Ford Hospital with her husband, Herman Dooha, her daughter, Susan Dooha, and her pastor, Edwin Rowe, at her side, hospital spokesman Synthia Bryant said. A cause of death was not released.

"She fought against desire eagerly racism and discrimination of all kinds. She not ever wavered in her beliefs and principles upon behalf of all of us," M Mahaffey's family said in a statement. "Maryann Mahaffey was a teacher, mentor, advocate and warrior for justice to the end"

M Mahaffey was first choiceed to the City Council in November 1973 She serv as council president pro tem from 1978 to 1982 and 1998 to 2001 and as the council's president from 1990 to 1998 and from 2002 to her retirement.

WITNESSED JAPANESE CAMPS IN '45

M Mahaffey had retired last year after being diagnosed with chronic, non-fatal T-cell leukemia.

"I'm to such a degree glad at this moment that Detroiters got an opportunity onward a couple of different occasions to thank her and give her flowers," Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said.

A native of Burlington, Iowa, M Mahaffey earned an undergraduate order at Cornell College in Iowa, and a master's in social work from the University of Southern California.

She was stake to become a librarian until a summer piece of work in a Japanese-American relocation camp in 1945 changed her mind.

"Seeing the inhumanity -- the injustice of keeping all those the community behind barbed wire for no reason other than their origin brought disclosed every sense of fairness and justice I had," she told the Detroit recents in a September 1974 article.

Michigan Gov Jennifer Granholm recalled that M Mahaffey was an extraordinary force. "She fought for justice for everyday citizens and for the disenfranchised," Granholm said in a statement. "She fought for racial equality; she was a warrior for health care for the uninsured; and she was an advocate for women and for children."

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