The New York Times

Wednesday, April 1, 1998.

People who knew Bella Abzug tended to describe her in terms of decibels. Her approach, heard from afar, somehow sounded like the rumble of a tank battalion on the move. Up close, it posed a definite threat to all the glass objects in proximity. Ms. Abzug, a leader of the feminist and anti-war movements in the 1970's, was a pioneer, and pioneers often have to shout so that those who follow can enjoy the right to modulated tones. But her pitch was also a measure of her intensity. Bella Abzug yelled, one friend said, because she took every conversation seriously.

A number of women served in Congress before Ms. Abzug, but most of them had succeeded their husbands, or been nominated by their parties as a reward for years of dutiful apprenticeship. Ms. Abzug was an outsider, who believed party leaders existed mainly to be ignored. She won national attention in 1970 with her successful grass-roots campaign against Democratic regulars for the party's Congressional nomination on Manhattan's West Side, followed by a victory over the radio talk-show host Barry Farber that November.

One of the remarkable things about Ms. Abzug was that she seemed to have absolutely no doubts e deserved to have power and would be able

to get it. She celebrated her arrival in Washington by introducing a resolution calling for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam, and getting into a much publicized battle to defend her right to wear her trademark wide-brimmed hats on the floor of the House.

Ms. Abzug gave up her House seat in 1976 to run for the Senate, losing in the primary to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Her later attempts to win office were also unsuccessful, but she never left the political arena. Even in her last years, confined to a wheelchair by illness and saddened by the death of her husband, Martin, she was a fixture at rallies, conferences and strategy sessions for the causes she believed in. Just a few days before heart surgery this year, when Ms. Abzug was so short of breath that she could move only with great difficulty, she gave a final speech at the United Nations.

The nation she left adopted many of her issues into the mainstream, like women's rights and environmentalism. But Ms. Abzug always remained an outsider. In a country that came to abhor politics, she never lost tier appetite for a good fight. Win or lose, Bella Abzug could never be entirely comfortable in a society that did not care enough to yell.