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Irene Patner, longtime supporter of Chicago culture, is dead at 86
By AARON GETTINGER
Staff writer, Hyde Park Herald
Irene Patner, 1933-2019 (Contributed photo)Irene Patner, a longstanding
figure in the cultural and political life of Hyde Park and Chicago, died
Sept. 6 at the age of 86.
Patner was born in Winchester, Kentucky, into an immigrant family
originally from Belarus and Lithuania that owned a menswear store. The
family took regular cultural trips to Cincinnati and later moved to
Lexington. Patner attributed her civic and social awareness to her civics
teacher at Henry Clay High School in Lexington — the same teacher who
taught her mother after she fled Vilna, Lithuania during the final months
of the Russian Empire.
Patner earned honors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving
to Hyde Park in 1954 after her husband, Marshall, whom she had met when he
was her sorority’s house boy, matriculated at the University of Chicago Law
School. After a brief, unsatisfying job doing office inventory at the
Chicago stockyards, she spent four years as head administrative assistant
for the Illinois ACLU.
She became a significant fixture in the fine arts scene. Over the years,
she worked for the Chicago International Film Festival, was a chairwoman
for the Women’s Association of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (for which
she made pre-concert speeches about classical music to local children),
managed the Chicago Ensemble (1978-1988) and was a board director for the 57th
Street Art Fair.
She joined the Urban Gateways, a nonprofit that supports music, art and
dance programs for public school students, as a volunteer in 1968 and
served on many committees over the years, including its Board of Directors
in 1989. The Hyde Park Neighborhood Club named her “Neighbor of the Year”
in 1991.
Marshall was a public interest lawyer and campaign manager for the late
Ald. Leon Despres (5th), opened the Medici Coffee House in 1958 and died in
2000, and Patner was a fellow partner to their business and political
efforts. They had three sons: Seth and Joshua, who survive her, and Andrew,
the prolific Chicago cultural and arts critic who died in 2015.
“She was one of the most curious, witty and original friends one could ever
have,” said Joan Shapiro, who first met Patner decades ago through their
work at the Chicago Ensemble. “When I first met her and Marshall, their
house was filled with music, books and a vitality, a serious intellectual
concern about issues of the day. There was never anything conventional
about their opinions, their engagements, their willingness to say what was
really at stake.”
A year after the Patners, who were Ray School parents, wrote a letter to
the Herald’s editor extolling the virtues of enrolling children in public
schools — “the opportunity to learn academic subjects and about the greater
community at the same time” — one Maryal Stone Dale wrote a letter in May
1974 after the South East Chicago Commission took over the South Park
Improvement Association. She thanked the Patners for having previously run
it and “keeping alive the idea of a community responsible for its own
maintenance during the giddy days when everyone else was more interested in
cleaning up the far corners of the world than tending their own gardens.”
In her final years, Patner was a common sight on weekend mornings at
Promontory Point, walking arm-in-arm with friends.
Tom Bachtell, a caricaturist for The New Yorker and Andrew’s surviving
partner, remembered Patner as a “fount of critical wisdom and standards,
and a direct, iconoclastic thinker and speaker.”
Joshua wrote that Patner was “vibrant, opinionated, ever-curious,
passionate, loyal and funny … courageous, life-affirming, a mighty wife and
mother, a good neighbor, a good citizen … ‘a participant,’ I think she
would say.”
David Polk, program director at classical music radio station WFMT, called
Patner “a source of inspiration, opinion, and great amusement. A force of
nature. I’m grateful to have known her and to be a part of her world.” In
her memory, WFMT broadcast two recordings of Jean Sibelius’ works played by
pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, whom she met while traveling and whom she later
hosted, along with Lang Lang and Daniel Barenboim, for dinner on Rosh
Hashanah.
Donations in Irene’s memory should be made to Urban Gateways.
A memorial is planned for Sunday, April 7, 2020, 2:00 - 5:00 PM, at
Promontory Point in Hyde Park.
To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.
Sponsored by Chicago Sun-Times.
1 Entry
Please accept my sincere condolences for the loss of your loved one. May (1 Thessalonians 4:14) bring you some comfort in knowing that there is a future for the ones we have lost in death. They are very precious in Gods eyes. May the God of all comfort strengthen your family during this time of deep sorrow.
October 5, 2019
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