BANGOR, Maine — A woman who was active in city politics for more than 30 years died last month in Florida at the age of 73, according to an obituary submitted to the BDN on Thursday.
Patricia Blanchette, a former city councilor and council chairwoman, Penobscot County treasurer and state representative, lived in Bangor until last year, when she moved to Florida to be closer to her son, Jim Blanchette.
She was residing in Dade City at the time of her death on Oct. 21, according to her obituary.
City staff and elected officials are saddened by the former councilor’s passing, according to a statement released Thursday by Bangor City Manager Cathy Conlow and Council Chairman Joseph Baldacci.
“Pat worked tirelessly for the citizens of Bangor and consistently represented all her constituents with great passion and conviction,” the release states. “All who worked with Pat recognized and appreciated her deep commitment to community and her straightforward style.”
Baldacci also shared his own thoughts on Blanchette in the release: “Pat loved Bangor and she loved helping people. She was outspoken and opinionated and none of us wanted her to be any different. Pat is now in heaven with her beloved husband Jim.”
Baldacci also said in a telephone interview that he had known Blanchette since he was in high school and met her working on various political campaigns.
He said Blanchette became the city’s second-ever woman council chair when he first was elected to that body in 1996 at a difficult time for the city. The former chair had stepped down around the time that questions arose about his handling of fundraising for improvements to Cascade Park.
“She had to step in and be kind of a unifying [force] for the council and the city,” Baldacci said.
Former Bangor council member Gerry Palmer — who like Blanchette also served as council chair and county treasurer — recalled Blanchette as an astute politician.
“She was very connected with the voters of Bangor,” he said Thursday. “She was always holding court in the aisles of Hannaford on Broadway [where she was a bookkeeper before she retired]. People would come up to her through the course of the day,” he said.
“She’d be doing her work but also talking politics and what their concerns were, where the potholes were bad. Whatever the issues were, she was right there and she had a great sense of the pulse of what was happening in Bangor,” Palmer said.
“The other thing is when she would go to Augusta [while serving in the House of Representatives], she would come back and talk to the local politicians about what her sense was and what was happening,” he said. “She was someone special who was well worth knowing. We’re going to miss her.”
Asked for her most memorable moment on the council shortly before she left it and moved to Florida, Blanchette said it was when she insulted talk radio host Don Imus in 1997, calling him “rude, crude and very offensive” when a local radio station asked to adorn the city’s 31-foot-tall Paul Bunyan statue with a T-shirt reading “Welcome to Bangor, Mr. Imus!” for his inaugural broadcast in Bangor. While the city had previously allowed the local Shriners to place a fez on Bunyan, Blanchette countered that Imus was hardly the Shriners.
The incident caused a public and on-air flap between Imus, Blanchette and others in the city.
Alleging that Blanchette had erroneously suggested he was not charitable, Imus called her “a frigid hag,” “an ignorant nitwit” and “a moron” on air and said in an interview, “We’re going to tear down that [expletive] statue.”
Blanchette went right back at him, saying she did not care what he said and would not welcome him to Bangor and that, if she wanted “X-rated pornography,” she would rent a video.
Blanchette was predeceased by her husband, James “Jim” Blanchette, who died in 2012. She is survived by their son, Jimmy Blanchette of Wesley Chapel, Florida.
No services had been scheduled as of Thursday. Her family asked in her obituary that any donations in her memory be made to the Bangor Humane Society.