ROCKY HILL - Long-time Rocky Hill elected official Barbara Surwilo, the town’s first woman to take the Mayor’s seat, passed away last Friday after a long battle with cancer.

       At that Monday night’s Town Council meeting, Claudia Baio, the second woman to become Mayor in Rocky Hill, honored Surwilo as a friend and mentor.

       While she was not serving during Surwilo’s most active years, Baio has known her since she was a teenager.

       â€�"Everybody knew Barbara in some fashion,” Baio said. â€�"She served in so many ways.”

       It started before Surwilo even became an elected official. The controversial I-291 beltway project came up, and she mobilized town residents against it, starting with a petition to Hartford before turning to the federal lawsuit that would halt the project, according to 1975 news coverage in The Day.

       The plan was ultimately defeated and Surwilo began her political life as a commissioner on Town Planning and Zoning, (TPZ) where her she was a staunch advocate for the protection of environmental landmarks in Rocky Hill.

       While open space became scarce in surrounding overdeveloped towns, Rocky Hill was the exception, said State Representative Tony Guerrera, who serves the Rocky Hill district.

       â€�"Barbara was an individual who cared so much about the environment and the town of Rocky Hill,” Guerrera said. â€�"She was the one who really got me to get involved.”

       Guerrera got so involved he became Mayor, serving alongside Surwilo, who was his Deputy Mayor.

       â€�"I feel very fortunate to have met Barbara and have had her as a part of my life,” he said.

       â€�"Any issue that she felt was important, she took on,” Baio said over the phone â€�"She didn’t shy away. That’s how she approached her illness and her life.”

       Even through her illness, she continued to serve, filling in as an alternate on the TPZ just weeks before her passing.

       â€�"She was headstrong,” Baio said. â€�"She wasn’t going to let that keep her from coming.”

       Baio recalled her 2015 campaign for Mayor, when Surwilo-an active member of the Rocky Hill Democratic Town Committee-would not let her condition keep her off the campaign team.

       â€�"She was ill and still insisted on being there to guide me,” Baio said. â€�"She treated me like a daughter.”

       Her best advice for Baio?

       â€�"If you believe in something, fight hard for it, and always be true to yourself,” Baio recalls being told.

       A Hartford native, Surwilo moved to Rocky Hill in 1991. She holds doctorates in both biochemistry and endocrinology, according to an obituary published in The Hartford Courant.