MARY PATRICIA de FREMERY

Mary Patricia (Pat) de Fremery A homemaker who kept the same sourdough starter alive for nearly forty years to make bread for friends and four generations of family, has died at age 83. She succumbed to lung cancer December 14, 2009 at her home in Mill Valley while surrounded by family. Her grandchildren were leafing through a photo album with their grandfather and had just discovered a dried rose from her wedding bouquet when she died. "I stubbed my toe on a log at Jones Beach, and tripped on a staircase, but he didn't think much about it," Pat said once of her first date with the man who would become her husband. "It wasn't until after a few more incidents on later dates that he said 'you don't see too well, do you?" Pat recalled in a 1979 Mill Valley Record interview. After corresponding with him during World War II, Pat married Paul de Fremery on June 21, 1946. He had just returned from fighting in France and Germany, where he had been wounded three times. When Paul arrived home, Pat's vision would have been worse than when the two first met. Her ability to see continued to diminish over the next decade, and she went completely blind at age thirty, when her children were ages ten and eight. Born January 6, 1926 in Jersey City, New Jersey, Pat lived the majority of her early years in New York City. After graduating from Garden City High School, she worked at a local publishing firm, Garden City Publishing Company, for a short time. Once married, Pat moved with her husband to Leavenworth Street in San Francisco. They lived there briefly before settling in Mill Valley in the early 1950s with Peter and Anne, their two children. Volunteering her time and baked goods at countless church functions, Pat became an important member of her church community. Father Richard Helmer of the Episcopal Church of Our Saviour described Pat's volunteerism and what he called her "legacy of spiritual spunk" at a small service held December 16. "[It was a] . . . spunk that saw reality and engaged it with a vivacious, feisty love . . . ," Helmer said in his homily. Pat's "feisty" "spiritual spunk" was supplemented by an uncanny intellectual acuity and physical strength that belied her handicap. Her grandson Wayne, who played seven years of rugby in high school and college, admits that he never won an arm wrestling contest with his grandmother. Wayne's Korean in-laws still do not believe that Pat was blind and frequently tell friends in Pusan, South Korea, how Pat hosted an "elegant" rehearsal dinner for their daughter's wedding. When Pat's grandchildren went looking for the phone book they presumed she kept after her death, they couldn't find one and quickly realized that she had memorized every number she called with any regularity and was the family telephone book. She and her husband went on bicycle tours of England (they rode tandem) and took trips to China, as well as enjoyed kayaking expeditions closer to home. Pat swam half a mile a day until just before her death. Having made a home for her husband and two children, bread for every family occasion since the mid-1970s, and a meaningful contribution to her community. Pat leaves her husband and two children, a sister, four grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. She has also left her sourdough starter, which will be given in equal portion to her children and grandchildren so that they can continue to bake her bread.