Published Wednesday, March 15, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Peacenik Miriam Patchen made people think and laugh
BY LORETTA GREEN
Mercury News Staff Columnist

PEACE activist Miriam Patchen would have liked the way the sidewalk filled
Tuesday afternoon on ``her'' corner at El Camino Real and Embarcadero Road
for a ``memorial protest vigil.''

For nearly 15 years Patchen held her ground in front of the Town & Country
Village shopping center in Palo Alto, where she consistently protested U.S.
military intervention in other countries.  Then on Monday of last week,
perhaps in the manner of the hymn, ``Peace, Like a River'' took her.

Jonathan Clark, who has known her from childhood, stopped at her home for
his regular Wednesday visit. He found her sitting in her chair where she
apparently had been reading when she died. She was 85.

Through the years, those who drove El Camino on Tuesday between 3 and 5
p.m. became accustomed to seeing the slight woman with gray hair, bushy
eyebrows and sky-blue eyes holding a sign about the Cuban embargo or
perhaps El Salvador. Sometimes it was Nicaragua, Iraq or Yugoslavia.
Drivers would either follow directions on the ``Honk for Peace'' sign or,
as fellow activist Paul George put it, they would demonstrate an opposing
view.

George, head of the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, brought signs to
the memorial, including a few blank ones so people ``could hold traditional
ones or make one to say goodbye to Miriam,'' he said.

At the vigil, more cars than usual honked enthusiastically at the nearly 40
people holding signs.  ``Miriam and Larry, we miss you,'' said the
fruit-bordered sign Jean McFadden made.  She purposely stood under a large
sycamore that Patchen would always be seen leaning against with her partner
Laurent Frantz in later years.  ``No more mass murder in my name,''
declared white letters on a black umbrella that Constance Marsh held aloft.

People knew Patchen, not only for her interest in peace, but because of her
late husband, Kenneth Patchen, a renowned poet, whom she married in 1932.
He died in 1972.  ``She told me that when she first met Kenneth, he read
her a little poem and she said, `This is a true, great poet,' and made up
her mind to see that his poetry got out,'' said

Purusha Obluda, who was part of a small dinner group with Miriam Patchen.
Obluda remembers her as a ``feisty, independent peacenik,'' devoted to her
husband's work.

Also in that dinner group was Carol Maddox, an occupational therapist who
has many memories with Patchen, including driving with her to San Diego
during the Cuba Friendshipment where they attempted to take computers
across Mexico's border. Maddox, who was at the vigil, had expected to take
Miriam Patchen to San Quentin Prison for a vigil for convicted murderer
Darrell Rich, slated for execution today. ``She'd go to San Quentin and I'd
be wearing 20 coats and sweaters, hat and boots and she'd be standing there
in her light coat and little shoes. Nothing bothered her,'' said Maddox.

Patchen was accompanied for years on the corner and in life by Frantz, a
constitutional scholar who held two law degrees. He helped Patchen's effort
to keep her husband's work alive and died in 1998 at age 84.

Clark, who grew up near the Patchens, says of her public persona that ``she
was a bit of a performer.''  ``She always characterized herself in
relationship to Kenneth and how she was just kind of a poet's wife,'' Clark
said. ``Obviously, I don't agree. She was a very interesting person on her
own and she was well-read and had her own ideas.''

As the sun began to sink Tuesday, Ken Dickman, who often drove Patchen to
the corner, turned his sign toward El Camino traffic. It said: ``Miriam
says, Peace for the World.'' Meanwhile, the U.S. defense secretary was
visiting Vietnam, after making it clear there would be no apologies for the
war.  Miriam Patchen would have had something to say about that.



       © 2000 Mercury Center.