Patricia Harris

As a schoolmate and later a co-administrator of the recently deceased Patricia Roberts Harris (she was associate dean of students and I director of public relations) at Howard University in Washington, D.C., I, among others who knew her intimately, was deeply saddened to learn of her death. She was a woman who set many “firsts” not only for blacks but also for women of all ethnic groups.

Pat’s greatest asset, in my opinion, was her demand for excellence. She could not, as she often said, always tactfully, “tolerate fools.”

To know Pat was to love her. She lost the 1982 mayoral election because many Washingtonians, 70% black, considered her “arrogant” and out of touch with “ordinary” blacks. What many of them did not know, however, was that Mrs. Harris for most of her life had also been “ordinary.”

Mrs. Harris came to Howard from Mattoon, Ill., in 1941 as winner of a full scholarship in a nationwide competition. Her father was a Pullman porter whose limited income would not have permitted Pat to enter Howard or any other college. In those days there was not the plethora of scholarships as there are today. In 1945 Pat was graduated summa cum laude and voted the outstanding member of her class.

Her postgraduate career is known by many--U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, secretary of housing and urban development and later health, education and welfare.

This woman was a “giant,” and her achievements should be an inspiration to blacks as well as women of all ethnic groups.

ERNEST E. GOODMAN

Los Angeles