Rachel Treichler, aged 73, passed away at home surrounded by family on May 15, 2025, after decades of managing life with breast cancer. Rachel was born in Iowa in 1951 to William and Martha Treichler, and grew up on her family’s organic farm in Troy Mills, Iowa. She attended high school at The Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado, and graduated from The Mountain School in Vershire, Vermont. She graduated from Harvard University in 1973. She worked at The Mountain School teaching silver work for a year after she graduated, and ran her own silver jewelry business for several years. Her designs were stylized representations of the natural world. In 1977 she moved to Austin, Texas and worked in the placement office of the law school at University of Texas, and graduated from the law school in 1981.
She practiced law in New York City with prominent firms specialized in insurance law. After practicing for several years, she opened a bookstore in Brooklyn called Ecobooks and volunteered with the Sierra Club and the Green Party. She was instrumental in setting up Brooklyn Greenbacks, an alternative currency.
After 9/11 she moved to Hammondsport, New York, to join her family on their organic farm. Rachel continued her environmental advocacy and ran for state office as a Green Party candidate. She opened her own law office and developed expertise in election law and in water and gas law. In collaboration with the Sierra Club, she volunteered her time for lawsuits for a number of important ecological issues, including environmental contamination from fracking waste and spreading of contaminated sludge on farmland. She volunteered as the town lawyer for the Town of Thurston as they resisted pressure to permit spreading sludge contaminated with industrial chemicals.
She was a long time member of the Bath Peace and Justice Group and the League of Women Voters. She appreciated her wide circle of friends that came from every period of her life. She enjoyed tending her organic garden and her flock of chickens. She spent many hours researching family genealogy and maintained close ties with extended family. She was a loving caregiver to her mother at the end of of her mother’s life.
She is survived by her four younger siblings and their spouses: Joseph Treichler, George and Lisa Treichler, Barbara and Eugene Gregor, and John Treichler, and her many nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews.
We will miss her greatly. Please help us honor her memory by enjoying the beauty of the natural world and tending your own gardens.