Patricia D. Hunt, retired American Friends Service Committee international project coordinator, has died at 105

Patricia D. Hunt, 105, of Kennett Square, retired international project coordinator for the Philadelphia-based American Friends Service Committee, former official at the Chester Housing Authority and the Delaware County Board of Assistance, longtime community organizer, mentor, and writer, died Monday, April 6, of age-associated decline at the Kendal at Longwood retirement community.

Organized, energetic, and naturally empathetic, Mrs. Hunt was recruited to Philadelphia in the early 1940s by the executive secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. She became especially adept at international relief administration for the Religious Society of Friends, and Clarence Pickett, the service committee executive secretary, tasked her with coordinating reconstruction, refugee, and peace-building programs in Finland, Germany, France, Austria, and elsewhere in the late 1940s after World War II.

After that, she created and supervised aid and educational programs in Palestine and Israel in the early 1950s, in Korea after the Korean War in 1953, and in India, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States in the 1960s. Later, from 1973 to her retirement in 1986, Mrs. Hunt coordinated service committee aid programs in Africa.

“Pat was a people person,” said her son, Timothy. “She had an unwavering Quaker faith and drive for taking actions to help people who were less fortunate.”

Her daughter, Jennifer, said: “She was family-oriented, strong, and very caring.”

As director of tenant relations for the Chester Housing Authority in the 1960s, Mrs. Hunt supervised more than 1,000 public housing units in four developments. She confronted all kinds of thorny issues and organized cooking, sewing, and home repair seminars for residents.

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“The biggest problem in public housing,” she told The Inquirer in 1966, “is educating tenants to keep their homes clean. Some of these people have had more than their share of great personal problems. But they are required to keep their home clean.”

In 1968, she was chair of the Chester Coordinating Committee on Community Service and the Public Welfare Advisory Committee for the Delaware County Board of Assistance. She championed social justice and civil and immigration rights wherever she was, lectured to groups all over about her global experiences, and protested locally in the streets well into her 90s.

She mentored colleagues and clients, and served on advisory boards at the Pendle Hill conference center and Media-Providence Friends School. In an online tribute, colleagues at Media-Providence Friends School said her “long life was marked by courage, service, and a deep belief in the power of education.”

In 1970, she wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily News that criticized a reduction in state welfare assistance benefits. In 2023, she completed a personal and philosophical memoir, 102 Years of Opportunities: A Life of Love and Family. On page 121, she wrote: “As every human being, I need to feel useful.”

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Mrs. Hunt earned a bachelor’s degree in Spanish, political science, and history at Swarthmore College in 1945 and a master’s degree in social work at Columbia University in 1947. Her devotion to service with the Quakers was spurred in her late teens, she told her family, after meeting an American Youth Hostel leader in Seattle.

At 19, in 1939, she bicycled across Europe and lived for a while in Mexico. “She was like a mighty oak tree with long branches,” her son said, “spreading acorns, which she nurtured and watched grow into her beloved community of friends and family.”

Patricia Dunham was born Dec. 20, 1920, in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. She was the youngest of four daughters and graduated from high school after her family moved to Seattle. Her father died when she was 8.

She met Frank Hunt in Philadelphia through the Quaker service committee, and they married in 1951 at Media Friends Meeting. They had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Timothy, and lived in Moylan, Delaware County. Her husband died in 1973, and Mrs. Hunt moved to Kendal in 2000.

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Mrs. Hunt was an avid reader and card game player. Her home library was extensive, and cribbage and casino were her favorite card games.

She doted on her family and joined Sunday meeting online during the pandemic. “We share our spiritual challenges and insights in our common struggle to cope in these dark times,” she said in her memoir.

She loved Siamese cats, photography, gardening, and Dunham family reunions in Cape May. The Inquirer featured the family reunion in a 2023 Sunday story about Jersey Shore memories, and she talked about watching the American flag lowered on the beach at sunset: “Standing barefoot in the sand, surrounded by patriotic families from far and near, I sense a deep belonging to our common heritage as a nation.”

She said in her memoir: “Love you neighbor as yourself with no exceptions. In the darkest hour, the light breaks through.”

In addition to her children, Mrs. Hunt is survived by two grandchildren, three great-granddaughters, and other relatives. Her three sisters died earlier.

A memorial service is to be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, July 5, at Kendal at Longwood, 1109 E. Baltimore Pike, Kennett Square, Pa. 19348.

Donations in her name may be made to the Media-Providence Friends School scholarship fund, 125 W. Third St., Media, Pa. 19063,