ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, May 31, 1996 TAG: 9605310061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
Below
PATRICIA HARBOUR, the creator of a cultural diversity workshop, is back in her hometown of Roanoke - and hoping to make a difference.
It seems appropriate, somehow, to begin Patricia Harbour's story by describing her father, Payton Moore, who died last Christmas Eve.
He started guitar lessons at age 75.
He bought a Power Mac computer at age 80.
His dying wish was to vote in last November's election. And just four weeks before he died, Patricia awoke to find her cancer-ridden father sitting upright on the couch - listening to ``Learn to Speak Spanish'' tapes. He was 81.
His example: When facing adversity - indeed, even when facing death - keep striving.
Patricia Harbour has always done that. At a time when only a handful of young blacks went to college, Harbour, a 1959 graduate of Roanoke's old Lucy Addison High School, got her undergraduate degree ... and her master's ... and her doctorate.
At a time when few inner-city teen-agers in Washington, D.C., could find jobs, she forged a public-private job partnership for them.
She's tried to make the world a better place. And now, armed with the financial backing of a world-class think tank, she's back in the home she grew up in. Still striving.
``I came back ostensibly to take care of my father and to handle his affairs,'' she says. ``But what I really came back for was to ground myself in my own roots. I find being here absolutely nurturing.''
Harbour attended Beijing's World Conference on Women last year - and returned home inspired to tell the personal stories of women across the globe. With the help of Roanoke writer Lucy Lee, she is compiling essays from 25 women whose lives were changed by the conference.
This may explain why the FedEx man makes several trips a day to Harbour's home on Staunton Avenue. With essays coming in from Nairobi to Nagasaki, with daily e-mails from across the globe, with a fax machine in her home office and a telephone in every room, Pat Harbour has firmly dug in her heels - and her heart.
Lucy Lee describes meeting her for coffee and, 15 minutes later, becoming her assistant. Formerly the director of the Women's Center at Hollins College, Lee had been writing part time for three years and looking for a new work niche - something that both stimulated and inspired her.
``Pat said to me, `Girl, you've been sitting on it in Roanoke long enough!''' Lee recalls, laughing. ``And she was right. I have never met a person with so much energy. Even at night when she's asleep, I'm convinced everything's still going.''
The pair has also organized a series of ``diversity dialogue workshops'' across the country. Held in cities including Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Roanoke, the dialogues bring together community leaders with the purpose of seeking ways to get people to tolerate, respect and celebrate each other's differences. Roanoke's two-day dialogue ended Thursday.
``All the `isms' are manifestations of the malaise in society,'' Harbour says. ``We need to raise the level of consciousness to where people can see that it's an asset to be around different people rather than a drawback.''
Harbour is a fellow of the Fetzer Institute, a Kalamazoo, Mich., research organization that produced the critically acclaimed Bill Moyers PBS series, ``Healing and the Mind.'' Fetzer is funding both the Beijing book and the diversity project.
Harbour credits Roanoke for much of her success. As salutatorian of her 1959 class, ``I received every scholarship they ever thought about giving in Roanoke. You talk about the `village' - this community is responsible for whoever I am. I can look back so many times in my life and think about how it was started and encouraged by somebody here in Roanoke.''
A theater major in college, Harbour went on to found a children's theater group, teach school, raise a family and get a master's degree. Eventually she became a consultant for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, then a doctoral student at Vanderbilt, then a school principal in Fairfax County and, later, an administrator for Washington, D.C., public schools.
Now a private consultant, she's traveled the globe training business managers and employees on cultural diversity, and personal and professional effectiveness.
She believes most people want to live a more spiritual life and build stronger bonds with the people around them. ``There are more and more people out there who value the richness of who we all are,'' she says.
``Change only occurs once or twice in a millennium, and here we are on the threshold of a new millennium, so we need to get busy here. My work is about chipping away a little and creating that opening.''
Lee concedes that Harbour's goals are idealistic and, to the casual observer, somewhat vague. ``Pat tends to go off into space because she's so excited about what she's doing. She's totally focused on the big picture.''
The diversity dialogues are framed around these basic questions: What are you experiencing that indicates more tolerance is needed? Can you imagine new possibilities for connection, intervention and invention?
``What's happened in our society is everybody's become so fragmented; there are so many agendas out there,'' Lee says. ``Everybody's mired down into their particular subgroup ... they're beginning to feel threatened by all the other groups.
``Pat's work is about getting us to relate to each other as human beings, to come together in our common humanity, even though we're diverse people.''
Harbour says she's convinced the Fetzer Institute has the resources to bring cultural diversity to the foreground. She hopes the dialogues will help Fetzer develop and advance new strategies for healing in society.
``I also hope to look at the impact of racism not just on people of color, but on people of noncolor - the effect that it has on an entire community.''
While noncommittal about staying in her hometown, she would like to become active in the area's teen-pregnancy prevention efforts. In a speech at Hollins College in February, she challenged students to create a mentoring link with adolescent girls in Roanoke.
``She just sort of energizes everything she's involved with,'' explains Anna Lawson, who met Harbour in the '70s when they both were associates for the Ohio-based Kettering Foundation.
``At one point we realized that she grew up black in Roanoke while I was growing up white in Salem. And if it hadn't been for Kettering, we wouldn't have ever gotten to know each other,'' Lawson says.
Lawson, who recruited Harbour to join Total Action Against Poverty's education commission, hopes she'll stay in Roanoke long enough to share her ideas with other area programs.
``She could make a big impact on Roanoke if she stays,'' Lawson says.
An amateur photographer, Harbour likes to show visitors her favorite picture, the one she shot of her father the day he cast his final vote. Standing dignified in his suit and tie, ``He was up waiting for me that morning and he said, `Great, you're up. We've got a lot to do today.'''
``I was supposed to be taking care of him, but he was taking care of me,'' she recalls. ``I learned in those last few months what it really means to have an intimate relationship with somebody.''
Later, when her father saw the photograph, he told her, ``I look like I'm somebody.''
``When I see something through the lens, I get chills,'' Harbour says. ``That's happening with my work now, too. There was a time when I'd lost hope for us coming together, but now I actually believe we can do it.''
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Roanoke native Patricia Harbourby CNBcame home last year to care for her sick father, and has stayed on.
"I find being here absolutely nurturing,'' she said. color.