SHEILA GALLAND

While watching a presentation in 1982 about refuseniks, the Soviet Jews who were denied permission to emigrate and then persecuted for wanting to leave, Sheila Galland decided she had to lend assistance. “She saw all this in a slide show,” said her husband, Peter of Acton, “and she immediately jumped up and said, ‘How can I help?’ ” As a liaison to lawmakers on Beacon Hill and in Washington, D.C., she spent more than two decades working to get aid to Jews in the Soviet Union, before and after the fall of communism. Mrs. Galland, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in February 2004 and helped educate others about the disease, died Nov. 5 in the Tippett Home hospice in Needham. She was 67 and lived in Acton. “She did a lot of good things,” said Judy Patkin, executive director of Action for Post-Soviet Jewry, based in Waltham. “Sheila came to us as a volunteer and later became staff. We have a lot of volunteers who only show up a few times, but Sheila was steady. She was always a good people person. She liked getting on the phone and connecting with people, and that was important to what we were doing.” Along with getting Congress and the Massachusetts Legislature involved with the cause, Mrs. Galland made several trips herself to the Soviet Union during years when helping refuseniks was dangerous. “Once when she was in a hotel, there were people constantly pacing outside her door at 3 in the morning,” her husband said. “She knew she was being watched.” Bringing assistance to refuseniks sometimes meant that Mrs. Galland and the others who visited would pack extra pairs of blue jeans, “which could be sold on the black market for significant revenue,” he said. “They would bring them as their own wardrobes.” Born in Revere, Sheila Edwards moved with her family to Brookline when she was 7. The ancestors of both her parents had immigrated from Russia. While attending Brookline High School, from which she graduated in 1959, she met Peter Galland. They began d