A co-founder of the Thomas Merton Center, Rush served as one of its central staff organizers from 1974 to 2005. In 1980 she was – along with Daniel and Philip Berrigan and other religious pacifists – one of the Plowshares Eight, symbolically beating the nose cone of a nuclear missile with hammers in protest against the threat of nuclear war. Her decades of work as a leading Pittsburgh activist in the area in struggles for peace, social and economic justice are reflected in a series of awards, among which are the Catholic Interracial Council’s John LaFarge Award for 1979; the Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Coalition Award of 1990; the 1994 Fannie Lou Hamer Award from Women for Racial & Economic Equality; the Mother Jones Award, PA. Labor History Society, 2003; the YWCA Tribute to Women 2003; the Just Harvest Award of 2004. Se was also cited as one of the 100 Peacemakers of the 20th Century by the National Catholic Reporter and as one of the “Pittsburghers of the 20th Century” by Pittsburgh Magazine. Married to Bill Rush, with six children and nine grandchildren, she continues to serve as a Board member of the Thomas Merton Center and on the Pennsylvania Steering Committee of the organization United for Single Payer Health Care.