Patricia R. Sher, a former Democratic state legislator who served as deputy majority leader of the House of Delegates and then as a senator from Montgomery County, died yesterday of emphysema at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring. She was 70.
Mrs. Sher's political activism began in the 1960s, when she worked to repeal "blue laws" that mandated Sunday business closings. She was first elected as a delegate in 1978 and retired from politics in 1995 as a state senator.
"She was very, very easy to work with," said former Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel, whose 1970 campaign in Montgomery County was managed by Mrs. Sher. "If she said, `I'm with you,' you didn't go back again because she meant what she said. And if she wasn't for something, she let you know where she stood, and that's very important."
Born Patricia Hesse in Washington, she moved to Greenbelt with her family when the New Deal planned community was founded in 1937, and she graduated from Greenbelt High School.
She was a part-time art student at the University of Maryland in 1953 when she went on a blind date with William Sher.
"The night I picked her up from art school, I fell in love immediately," said Mr. Sher. The couple were married in 1965.
At first, she worked behind the scenes to support her husband's career in politics as a Montgomery County Council member. In 1978, she won the first of three terms as a delegate representing parts of Chevy Chase, Silver Spring, Kensington and Wheaton.
In 1990 she was elected to the Senate, where she served until 1995.
A son, Tod David Sher, now represents Silver Spring in the House of Delegates. "I think she was more proud at his swearing-in than she was at her own," her husband said.
Mrs. Sher graduated from the University of Maryland in 1983. She also was an artist who made sculptures, collages and quilts from fabric.
Services will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Vanzansky Goldberg Funeral Home in Rockville.
In addition to her husband and son, she is survived by a daughter, Valerie Lynn Sher of Los Gatos, Calif.; two other sons, Mark Stephen Sher of San Francisco and Hunter Neal Sher of Silver Spring; two brothers, Philip Hesse of Ellicott City and John David Hesse of Clearwater, Fla.; a sister, Laura Carter of St. Albans, England; a stepmother, Mary Hesse of Kitzmiller, Md.; two stepsisters and two stepbrothers.
