Mary Pat Clarke

Mary Pat Clarke, 83, a former president of the Baltimore City Council, died peacefully surrounded by family on November 10, 2024, following a brief illness. She died nine months to the day after the death of her husband of sixty years, Joe.

To the people of Baltimore, Mary Pat was a tireless advocate, problem solver, mentor, and pathbreaker. For thirty-two of the past fifty years, she served as a member of the Baltimore City Council, including two terms as its president from 1987 to 1995. She is recognized as the first woman elected to Baltimore citywide office, but her public service was driven not by that type of recognition but instead by her connection to the people of Baltimore and her ability to help solve the challenges they faced.

She was a regular presence in the city's neighborhoods, where calls of "Mary Pat" were met with an energetic greeting, by name, to the person who called out to her. She never was found without a stack of note cards and a reliable ball-point pen for taking notes about problems that needed to be addressed - and always were. Decades before the internet made phone lists obsolete, she published a list of numbers throughout City government, labelled "Where to Call for Help," that could be found on the bulletin boards or kitchen walls of many Baltimore homes.

In 1995, Mary Pat was unsuccessful in her campaign to unseat Baltimore's incumbent mayor Kurt Schmoke. A ten-year break from elected office allowed her to return to teaching, which had been her original career. She taught writing, government, and everything Baltimore to students at UMBC, Johns Hopkins, and the Maryland Institute College of Art, and she loved it.

But in 2004, when the City Council was restructured into separately represented districts, Mary Pat jumped back into public life as the representative for District 14, around her Tuscany-Canterbury neighborhood. Over the next 16 years, she shared her experience and leadership advice to a new generation of elected officials before retiring in 2020 to make way for her successor Odette Ramos.

While Baltimoreans knew her as Mary Pat, she was "Bubby" to her large family of four children and ten grandchildren. Her desk and hallways were covered with photographs of her kids, their families, and her many grandchildren, and with their artwork, essays, poems, academic and sports achievements, college logos, and memorable notes. She was the hub of yearly family trips to Rehoboth Beach, where she was quick to recount tales from her own childhood in Providence, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, and Huntington, West Virginia, between trips to the bookstore, ice cream stand, or Fun Land, or a family evening in front of an Orioles game.

Mary Pat was born in Providence in June 1941, the eldest of three children of Jim and Mary (Irish) Hines. Her early years in Providence were the source of vivid, life-long memories of her large extended family, many living within the same few blocks around the parish church. She was a precocious kid who demonstrated her determination at an early age. Unable to see her teacher's writing in third grade because of a desk at the back of the class, Mary Pat finally learned that she was nearsighted. She was surprised when with eyeglasses she saw that the green blur of treetops was individual leaves. The new clarity of vision was an epiphany.

Several family moves followed, ultimately leading to the suburbs of Philadelphia, which is where Mary Pat met J. Joseph Clarke, her future husband, at a St. Patrick's Day mixer. She received her bachelor's degree from Immaculata College in 1963, and she and Joe married later that year and began their careers as high school teachers. In 1967, Mary Pat earned a masters degree in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, where years later she also started work toward a Ph.D.

In 1967, the couple moved to Baltimore, Joe's hometown, and it was there that they would raise their four children, John, Erin, Susan, and Jennifer, in a rowhouse across the street from Joe's mother Rose Ellen.

Mary Pat and Joe were energized by Democratic politics in the late 1960's and early 1970's and in efforts to bring Baltimore together in a period of racial tension after the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. They were members of the New Democratic Club, which sought to take on Baltimore's ensconced political clubs while working in coalition with reform-minded political organizations from Baltimore's Black communities. Both Joe and Mary Pat were candidates on some of Baltimore's earliest racially integrated political tickets.

Although best known for her unflagging energy, those closest to Mary Pat will also miss her laughter, compassion, integrity, and fearlessness. She was a role model and inspiration to her friends and family as much as she was to the people of Baltimore. She was loved and will be missed.

In addition to her husband Joe, Mary Pat was preceded in death by her parents and many dear friends. She is survived by her sister Susan Palombi and husband Angelo, of Apex, NC, her brother Jim Hines and wife Sandy of Holt, MI; her children: John and Susan Clarke of New Canaan, CT; Erin and David Gorden of Dover, MA; Susan and Jay Chandrasekhar of Los Angeles, CA; and Jennifer Clarke of Baltimore; and her ten grandchildren: Paull, Lucy, and Amy Hubbard; Tom and Claire Gorden; Will, Ella, and Janie Chandrasekhar; and Eleanor and Steele Clarke.

A funeral mass will be held at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen on Saturday, November 23, at 10:30 a.m. with a reception to follow immediately afterward.

In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Mary Pat can be made to a community-based charity of your choice.