MARQUETTE – The late Pat Ryan O’Day, who owned Marquette Monthly for more than two decades, has been posthumously selected to receive the 2015 Fred Rydholm Sisu Award from Save the Wild U.P., a grassroots environmental nonprofit.

The award will be presented at SWUP’s Dec. 5 Winter Gala at the Steinhaus Market in Marquette. The evening’s festivities will also include a silent auction featuring original work by dozens of Upper Peninsula artists, artisans and entrepreneurs; the music of local jazz combo Soul Pasty; and keynote speaker Louis V. Galdieri, director of the documentary film “1913 Massacre.”

Presenting the Fred Rydholm Sisu Award, an engraved wooden sauna ladle, will be Fred’s son, Daniel.

“My father would agree wholeheartedly with the selection of Pat Ryan O’Day for the Sisu Award,” he said in a news release. “As a publisher, writer, business owner and mentor, Pat was a clear-eyed and passionate defender of the community and our environment for decades. She perfectly embodied values of public service and stewardship, and she brought out the best in everyone who knew her.”

Save the Wild U.P. created the award in memory of the late Fred Rydholm, who embodied SWUP’s environmental values.

“Sisu has become a Yooper thing, a word meaning perseverance, grit, resilience,” said SWUP Executive Director Alexandra Maxwell in a news release. “it was a concept in the Finnish language brought by Finnish immigrants who settled in the Upper Peninsula.”

Maxwell said that in a group sauna, it’s an honor to be given the responsibility of making steam, using the wooden ladle, called “lylykauha,” to pour water over the sauna stones.

Maxwell said: “Pat Ryan O’Day was a cultural life-force in our community, a steam-maker. She truly deserves this honor.”

Ryan O’Day (1932-2015), owned Marquette Monthly for more than 20 years. The publication, which began in 1987, was purchased by Ryan O’Day in 1992. Under Ryan O’Day’s ownership, Marquette Monthly won numerous Good News Awards, and in 2011, it was awarded recognition in the Marquette Arts and Culture Awards for its long-standing excellence and contribution to the community. News stories related to health and stories about environmental issues critical to U.P. residents often made their way into the publication.

Prior to owning Marquette Monthly, Ryan O’Day owned the Action Shopper in Marquette. She was also actively involved as a board member of Northern Michigan University’s North Wind student newspaper.

Ryan O’Day supported young people, including 8-18 Media with its own column in Marquette Monthly.

C. Fred Rydholm (1924-2009) was a teacher, wilderness guide, three-term mayor of the city of Marquette and author of “Superior Heartland: A Backwood History.”

The Fred Rydholm Sisu Award was established in 2013 to recognize the perseverance of dedicated community-minded activists and environmental stewards.

In selecting Ryan O’Day as the award recipient, SWUP’s board members praised her many outstanding qualities.

“Above all, Pat exemplified virtues of hard work, perseverance and unity,” SWUP President Kathleen Heideman said in a news release. “Like Fred, she was community-centered, loving and fearless, even when her editorial support for the environmental perspective led to criticism and threats.”

Heideman said in a telephone interview she had a “virtual relationship” with Ryan O’Day, not often seeing her face to face, but still felt her “powerful presence.”

“I felt like I knew her,” said Heideman, who is Rydholm’s daughter-in-law.

She also expressed her appreciation for Ryan O’Day’s ability to make room for the environmental perspective in the monthly publication.

“They had such limited exposure compared to a daily,” Heideman said.

Ryan O’Day’s daughter Aileen commented on her mother’s feelings for the community.

“My mum loved this community and she never ceased to be pleased with how its readers responded to the Marquette Monthly,” she said in a news release. “We intend to make sure that legacy continues.”

Save the Wild U.P. is dedicated to defending clean water and wild places from the threat of sulfide mining and to preserving the U.P’s unique culture.

Larry Chabot, longtime writer for Marquette Monthly, said in a news release his contact with Ryan O’Day came primarily from emails and phone calls, but she still printed 106 of his historical articles.

“From my first Marquette Monthly article in 1997, which she accepted without knowing anything about me, until she passed in January, we only met twice,” Chabot said.

Chabot also said that through Marquette Monthly, Ryan O’Day gave space to a great variety of writers and provided lists of events, museums, galleries and celebrations, and the much-appreciated New York Times Sunday crossword puzzles.