Former Chiswick councillor Pat Sterne dies

Pat Sterne; family photograph

A life of public service in education and representing Chiswick Homefields ward on Hounslow Council

Pat Sterne, who represented Chiswick as a Labour councillor on Hounslow Council from 1994 – 2002, has died at the age of 91.

She was elected as the first Labour councillor to represent Chiswick Homefields after she retired from a career in teaching. Her husband Michael, who predeceased her in 2015, also worked in education and was also a councillor on Hounslow Council, becoming its education spokesman.

Writing Pat’s obituary for The Guardian, their grand-daughter Rebecca Alper-Grant remembers:

‘One of her many mottoes was “all children deserve the best”. She worked incredibly hard to nurture and value each child, ensuring that each pupil was praised, rewarded and had their work displayed.  She spent evenings practising the piano for assemblies.

‘Pat naturally gravitated towards special needs education, and became a headteacher at schools for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties – first Southern Cross School in Manchester, and then at North Croft School in Hammersmith, west London’.

She volunteered for Age Concern Chiswick ‘and was still arranging excursions and activities for the “old people” well into her 80s’, writes Rebecca.

Pat died at a care home in Manchester, where she had been actively involved in the social life, and is survived by her children, Jonathan, Abigail and Gabriel, grandchildren, Max, Kit, Emily, Ben, Daniel, Ellie, Stanley, Anna and Rebecca, and great-granddaughter, Naomi, and by her sister, Janet.