I am very sad to hear this. Pat touched and positively impacted so many people. While MIT has the world’s best technologists, sometimes we are geeks and having a second mom like Pat around helped put the world in proper perspective. I was definitely one of those impacted.
I think you know that I was not originally an active participant in the MIT-Japan program until Pat reached out to me about the Shimizu internship. That experience guided my career direction as it reinforced my desire to work/live in Japan and led to my introduction to Teradyne, a company completely unrelated to my OE background.
Please pass on my condolences to her family. I will truly miss her.
Mike Mitsumata, MIT-Japan 1986
This is a rather humble story, but I think it illustrates Pat’s personality somewhat.
In my last year before going to Japan, Pat held a party at her house for affiliates of the MIT-Japan program. Late in the afternoon, I found her washing dishes in the kitchenette next to the main party room. I asked her if I could wash the dishes, so that she could do something else. She said “yes, of course!,” handed me the dish cloth, and walked away. I turned to the sink, and discovered that she had already finished all but two or three of the plates. There was enough work that I was able to feel useful, but not enough work to actually cause me any inconvenience at all --- she had already done all of the rest of the work.
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, MIT-Japan 1989
Sorry to hear Pat has passed away, but I feel so lucky to have known her!! Absolutely wonderful, kind person. I have many fond memories of Pat, but here is a story:
I had been working with Pat for over 2 years including Japanese classes at MIT, Japanese tea ceremony classes with visiting scientist and the “Japanese wife’s club I think Pat started,... I was getting nervous because my visa had not arrived and I was heading to Tokyo in 1 week to start my internship at KDD research labs with a stop in (the San Francisco) Bay Area to visit my parents. It wasn’t the first time I had come by to see Pat asking why my visa had not arrived, but this time instead of the “Be patient, I’m sure it is being processed” I got a different response, “It is getting kind of late even for the Japanese ‘Just in time’, let me see who I can call.” She went to her Rolodex, yes in 1989 she still had a Rolodex, and found a number for the Japanese ambassador to US in Washington DC. Pat asked me to come back the next day and said not to worry. I came back the next day and she said she had spoken to the Ambassador and that he would confirm my (visa application) passport was processed. I left two days later for San Francisco without my passport, but with another assurance from Pat not to worry. The day before I was to leave for Tokyo I got a call from Pat saying my visa was ready and that my passport would be delivered to my house in Livermore about 40 miles from SFO by 10:30AM. My flight was 1PM so my mother drove me to the airport early in morning and I checked in my bags while my dad waited for my passport. A courier from Japanese consulate in San Francisco dropped my passport with my father at around 10AM, my father met me around 11:30 at the airport and off I went to Japan!
Pat knew so many people and had such a wonderful rapport with everyone she met that nothing was impossible when she took out her rolodex.
Paul Martin, MIT-Japan 1989
I graduated MIT in the summer of 1988 and went to Japan for the next year on the recently established MIT-Japan program. When I met Pat as an undergraduate I had taken about 3 months of Japanese language courses. She informally ’tested’ my all-but-nonexistant understanding of the Japanese language and immediately assured me that ‘everything would be fine and I’d have no problems’ on the upcoming year-long trip to Japan where I would be living as the sole foreigner in a Japanese employee dormitory. I continued to study Japanese for several years even after returning from Japan and to this day the experience of living in Japan, seeing the world as a foreigner and being the receipting of the innumerable gracious acts by my Japanese hosts has shaped the course of my adult life. Pat and everybody at the MIT-Japan program gave me and so many people a tremendous gift. I’ll always remember Pat and that she took a bet on sending a woefully underprepared but eternally grateful student to represent her program and be a part of the MIT-Japan Program.
Ethan Foxman, 88’ BS Physics, 93’ PhD Physics, MIT-Japan 1989
Pat was wonderful, a real driving force behind the program. She set up my two MIT-Japan Program internships at TDK and Nippon Steel. I'll never forget her talk at the first info session I attended as a newly arrived freshman in September 1988, where she described the walkabout traditions of many cultures around the world, a lone journey without the familiar creature comforts of home, which would shape a young person's journey into adulthood. She repeated the phrase "no sex, no salt" several times to describe the absence of creature comforts, and after about the fourth or fifth time, Richard Samuels cut in with "Just to be clear, those are not requirements of this program." Indeed, we all love and will miss Pat.
Adam C Powell, IV, SB ’92 (Mat Science, Economics), PhD ’97 (Mat Science), MIT-Japan 1990, 1991