Patricia Harrison Owned Island Catering Business

Vineyard Haven resident Patricia Crane Harrison died Nov. 9 at home with her family after a four-month battle with cancer. She was the owner and chef of Vineyard Haute Cuisine, a catering business she started in 1995.

Born in 1934, Pat grew up in Waban, a village in Newton; was graduated from Mills College in Oakland, Calif.; and did graduate work in French studies at the University of Paris and in cultural anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C.

Pat began her career with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 1960 in Laos during a civil war. She married USAID official Jacob L. Crane 3rd in 1962, gave birth to two daughters, Lisa and Nicole, and relished her life in the foreign service in Senegal, Afghanistan, Jordan, Nepal and Zaire, until Jake's death in 1980. In those years, she became an accomplished high Himalaya trekker, an avid and adventurous cook and a seasoned sailor, cruising in the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean Seas, and across the Atlantic to the Caribbean aboard a 36-foot ketch with her husband and daughters.

After serving in Haiti from 1981 to 1983, Pat returned to work in USAID headquarters in Washington. She retired from government service in 1988 and moved to her home in Vineyard Haven. She married author, Tufts University professor and former USAID official Lawrence Harrison in 1990, the year in which she opened Harrison's Restaurant on the wharf at Oak Bluffs. In the fall of 1993, she started an intensive course at the Cordon Bleu School of Cuisine in Ottawa, Ontario. In the summer of 1994, she apprenticed at Lydia Shire's Pignoli Restaurant in Boston and then completed her Cordon Bleu studies with honors in London. She started Vineyard Haute Cuisine the following spring.

Over the past 11 years, Pat catered some 75 weddings and innumerable cocktail and dinner parties. She earned a reputation as a chef who produced the highest quality food, beautifully presented by a staff committed to gracious service. Her files are filled with effusive letters from grateful brides.

Pat will be remembered for the amazing crab cakes she served every year at the Taste of the Vineyard, wearing her signature floppy red chef's hat. But it was the style and beauty that graced everything she did for which she will be best remembered by her friends, family, staff, brides and numerous clients.

Pat loved golf -- she had a hole-in-one at Farm Neck Golf Club in 2001 -- and duplicate bridge. She continued to be a world traveler and particularly enjoyed driving trips to the West Coast and Canada with husband Larry and their dogs.

Pat is survived by Larry, daughters Lisa and Nicole, step-daughters Julia, Beth and Amy, sister Karen, brother Chuck and 11 grandchildren.

A celebration of her life will be held in spring 2006.

In lieu of flowers, please consider a contribution to a scholarship fund that is being established in Pat's name for culinary arts students at the Martha's Vineyard Regional High School. Please send checks payable to the Patricia Crane Harrison Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 1550, Vineyard Haven, MA 02568.