If you're out and about really early in the morning (often before sunrise), you may meet Mary Bodem walking around the Village in company with her good friend, Honey, a golden retriever. You can bet that, as she walks, Mary is keeping her eyes open, checking on the daily health of the Village, as she has for nearly a quarter of a century.

That routine soon will change though. Mary's husband, George, is retiring from Eastman Kodak and the couple are preparing to return to their roots in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

Although Mary is perhaps best known for her yearsof wise leadership on the Planning and Zoning Boards, Mayor Bob Corby points out that her vision is far broader: "Mary was one of the first to understand the potential for a canal park in the heart of the Village. Throughout the early 1990s she was instrumental in helping us develop an attractive and workable park plan. Those efforts eventually resulted in grants that enabled us to build a canal-side dock and pavilion, to install lighting, and develop landscaping.

"During her 15-year tenure on the Planning and Zoning Boards Mary brought extraordinary skills to the Village. She came on the scene just at the right time, when the level of development and traffic was escalating. Mary recognized the importance of scale in the Village landscape, and she understood the planning and zoning issues for a village must be seen as qualitatively different than those in a larger community."

Mary says she knew she would become involved in community life the moment she arrived here in 1978 with George, a research scientist newly recruited to Kodak's labs, and two little children. "We had no interest in the suburban homes the realtor showed us on our visits from Minneapolis," she recalls. "But when we learned that an older home on Monroe Avenue was for sale, we made a special trip - and loved what we saw."

Almost immediately, new friends Betty Van Huysen and Gail Mott encouraged Mary to become involved with school PTSA, zoning, and environmental issues.

Twenty years ago, planning efforts in small communities like Pittsford were minimal. Yet a tidal wave of expansion and suburban development was about to be unleashed, and Pittsford - for years a quiet rural community - would feel the force of the impact.

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