A civil rights activist and dedicated teacher

Patricia Allen of Eagan, a dedicated teacher who gave time and money to help her students at the Bruce Vento Elementary School in St. Paul, died of suspected cardiopulmonary failure on July 5 in Minneapolis.

The longtime St. Paul resident was 64.

She grew up in Cocoa, Fla., and after high school, she attended college and helped teach with the Head Start program.

In the South, she was active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, protesting segregation.

She moved to the Twin Cities to finish her degree at Concordia College in St. Paul, graduating in 1969, and continued to volunteer in social justice causes.

Mahmoud El-Kati, a Macalester College professor and civic activist, said Allen was a strong advocate for human and civil rights.

"She had a good reputation as a civically engaged person, someone who cared," said El-Kati.

"It was always about the kids," said Jane Baker of Eagan, a retired Bruce Vento teacher. "I was amazed. If the school didn't have the materials, she wanted to work with, she would go out and buy them."

When she was a new teacher, she would make teaching aids, such as flash cards, for her students, many of whom were poor. And if they didn't have shoes or clothes, she would either buy them or collect them.

"She took a lot of time with parents," Baker said. "Children felt very much at home with Pat."

Allen also was a longtime member of the Lexington-Hamline Community Council and, in the late 1970s, she often worked with St. Paul police officer Tom Walsh, who is now public information officer for the department.

"She was a force in that neighborhood," Walsh said. "She was instrumental in making that neighborhood a safer place to live. She understood the power a neighborhood had to make itself more livable."

"She really claimed everyone as her own children or grandchildren," her daughter said.

In addition to Kerri, she is survived by her other daughters, Alicia Gibbs of Chicago and Tracie Spellman of New York; sons Warner Gibbs of Madrid, Spain, Dwayne Gibbs of St. Paul and Paul Allen of Schaumburg, Ill.; sisters Edna Haynes of Columbus, Ga., Norma Jean Kimbrough of Cocoa, Fla., Brenda Guilford of Atlanta and Eula Hanes of St. Paul; brother Arthur Wells of Cocoa, Fla.; former husbands, Warner Gibbs of West Palm Beach, Fla. and David Allen of Barnstead, N.H.; 10 grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.