Alexandria Waterfront Activist Ellen Pickering, 78

Ellen Pickering, 78, a former member of the Alexandria City Council and an environmental activist who battled developers eager to festoon Alexandria's historic waterfront with offices and apartment buildings, died April 26 of pneumonia at Inova Alexandria Hospital.

She also helped organize the group Save the George Washington Memorial Parkway and fought for three decades to prevent an interchange off the scenic route into an area called Potomac Greens. She and other Alexandria residents took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1998, they prevailed.

Mrs. Pickering's efforts to preserve the legacy of Alexandria's 1.5-mile Potomac shoreline began in the early 1970s, before she served on the City Council. In 1978, she opposed a plan to convert the former torpedo factory at the foot of King Street into a residential and commercial complex. She called the proposal "just one more example of the vultures preying upon the crown jewels of the city, the crown jewel being the waterfront."

A proponent of a national historic park along the waterfront, she wrote a letter to the Interior Department in 1978, inquiring whether the federal government had any interest in the area. A response letter said that the city's waterfront did not qualify as a national historic park.

She was still battling three years later and noted in a 1981 Washington Post opinion piece that the city's waterfront "has been an Indian hunting ground, a bustling merchants' port, a national defense facility and, more recently, a tempting morsel for the maws of development."

Mrs. Pickering expressed concern not only that office buildings and apartments were inappropriate for the waterfront but also that they would wall off the public from the Potomac. "The public interest here cannot be ignored or left to the vagaries of local government," she said.

The ongoing controversy prompted the federal government to sue the city over ownership of the waterfront. The suit was settled in 1981, and Alexandria and the National Park Service joined forces out of the courtroom to produce a comprehensive waterfront plan.

Mrs. Pickering told The Post in 1984 that she had "not one single, tiny regret" about the lawsuit she helped prompt. Otherwise, she said, "there wouldn't be any Oronoco Bay Park, no Founder's Park, no Pommander Walk Park, the foot of King Street would not have been recaptured, it was all private property."

Another of her crusades was construction of the 18.5-mile Mount Vernon Trail. In the early 1970s, she not only pushed the National Park Service to approve the trail but also recruited volunteers to help spread gravel.

She was born Frances Ellen Duff in Dallas and grew up in Boston, the eldest daughter in a family of 10 children. She graduated from Emerson College in 1951 with a degree in speech therapy. She and her husband lived in Kansas City, Mo., and Fairfield, Conn., before moving to Alexandria in 1962.

Her first foray into civic affairs was as chairman of the Alexandria Beautification Committee. Fellow preservationists, Republicans and Democrats, urged her to run for City Council. She ran as an independent and won in 1976.

Two of her children recalled that her City Council service revealed an interest in the technical side of things, which surprised her family. She sought out public documents and involved herself in land-use plans and other complex details so that she would be prepared for the inevitable public debate.

"She also was uncompromising," said her son David Pickering of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

"She drove some people crazy that way," said her daughter, Frances Pickering of the District.

She lost her bid for reelection.

She was a member of the Alexandria Sanitation Commission, president of the Northern Virginia Conservation Council and active with the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women.

Her husband, Harlan D. Pickering, and a daughter, Paula Pickering, preceded her in death.

Survivors, in addition to her son and daughter, include another son, Duff Pickering of Encinitas, Calif.; five brothers; a sister; and three grandchildren.