Pat Birnie, longtime WILPF activist.

By Marliese Diaz
Former Chair, Baltimore Branch

May 2020

Baltimore and Arizona lost another extraordinary WILPF member on April 15, 2020, Pat Birnie. Pat turned 90 last September 2.

Through the 1980s and until she moved first to Florida and then to Arizona in 1993, Pat’s activism took her to protest at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physical Lab located between Baltimore and D.C.

We would get those reports at branch meetings and hear her stories of going to General Electric board meetings and taking on the stockholders about GE’s investments in weapons contracts. She owned some stock in GE and Pat took that issue seriously, as we learned firsthand.

A longer bio will be printed in the next issue of Peace & Freedom. Here is one remembrance of Pat from Felice Cohen-Joppa:

Pat Birnie, Presente! My friend Pat, a longtime and tireless peace and anti-nuclear activist, died on April 15 at age 90. Pat and Betty Schroeder, her friend and partner in crime (literally and figuratively, with both women arrested occasionally at protests, including with other Raging Grannies at a Military Recruiting Center!), moved to Tucson in 1994.

It was with Pat and Betty that Jack and I started monthly peace vigils at Davis Monthan Air Force Base and Raytheon Missile Systems more than 20 years ago, which continue to this day. We did A LOT of organizing and protesting together! Together with others, including Jim and Lucille Burkholder, we spent many months organizing multiple events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Pat, a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, was a very kind and caring person. When Jack had surgery after breaking his arm in a bicycle accident, she and Betty came over to deliver a big box of groceries and make sure he was okay. Betty died in 2009, and Pat later moved to Maryland to be near her family, leaving some very big shoes to fill in the Tucson activist community.

For many years, Pat dedicated herself to working for a nuclear-free future, and I am deeply grateful for her vision, for her persistence and for the way she inspired and invited so many people to join her.