It is with much sadness that we share news of the recent passing of Pat Fry, former Political Director of the Committee of Interns and Residents SEIU (CIR), and a longtime volunteer with our coalition after she retired about a decade ago. She died after a long illness while in home hospice care, surrounded by her family and close friends in Traverse City, Michigan. Plans are in development for public memorial events in the early Fall in her hometown of Detroit and in New York City where Pat lived and worked. You can read a brief obituary about Pat here.
Pat was an ardent trade union and social justice activist who worked tirelessly with us in the struggle for universal health care here in New York and across the United States. Our world is a better place because of her life and work, and we are now the lesser with her passing.
In memory of Pat and carrying forward her passion and spirit, we are proud to announce our new “Pat Fry Health Care Justice Memorial Fund”, to receive donations from friends, family, and colleagues upon her death, at Pat’s request. We are honored and humbled to be chosen in this way.
People can honor Pat’s wishes and donate to this new fund here, and we thank you for your contributions.
Contributions to the fund will be used to support our ongoing work that centers on health care issues in Congress, and in particular our role in leading the Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and it’s sister campaign Lower Drug Prices Now in New York, as we have for nearly 15 years now. HCAN is the national multi-constituency campaign that pushed comprehensive health care reform through Congress in 2009-10 which resulted in what we now know as the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Since then, HCAN has led efforts to implement the law, defend it against numerous repeal attempts, and improve and expand its provisions to benefit more people over time. Millions of people across the US have benefited from this landmark and historic piece of social legislation, and Pat played an important role in making that happen.
During her tenure with CIR, Pat was instrumental in guiding and rallying the physician and health care union community behind the campaign for health care reforms, both nationally and locally. During the 15-month legislative campaign for the ACA, she and her CIR colleagues Tim Foley and Anne Mitchell provided crucial in-kind support to our NYC Organizing Committee for HCAN, and the congressional fight was a grueling up-and-down struggle from start to finish. In the end, 12 of 13 members of Congress from NYC voted for the bill, and it only passed by a handful of votes overall. Pat deserves a good part of the credit for that outcome.
Once she retired, Pat volunteered with us to help out with all kinds of tasks, in particular with outreach to unions for our various campaigns that focus on state and federal health care issues.
We mourn Pat’s passing, will miss her savvy strategic thinking, and recommit ourselves in her spirit to the fight for health care justice and universal health care. We also celebrate her extraordinary life and work. Pat Fry, presente! Rest in power.