Last month, as part of our ongoing Opinions section series on health reform, we featured an article on the crucial yet largely overlooked contribution made by home-care workers.
Pat Lotz was neither the writer nor the editor, although she was skilled in both. She was the subject. Her husband Jim penned the piece, which dealt in part with the challenges of caring for Pat as she battled Alzheimer’s disease.
It is with sadness that we note the passing of Pat Lotz last week. Dementia robbed her of her spirit over the past five years, but in one small act of restitution, we’d like to remember that spirit here today. As her obituary illustrated, she was an accomplished woman: librarian, public servant, researcher, journalist, published author, but most of all, a life-long learner.
She was constantly renewing her interests and reinventing her career long before the working world demanded this of us all.
It’s fitting, therefore, that her last public foray — through the intermediary of her husband — was to participate in a project about reinventing the health care system for the 21st century. We would like to thank her, not only for this contribution, but for the many contributions she made to this country since she first set foot here as an immigrant 60 years ago.
