Pat Kingman

[Morty Abzug]

Pat Kingman has passed on. She loved Unix and Linux dearly. She came
to some of our meetings early on, and she attended the LUG anniversary
party most years that we had one. She worked as a scientist at a time
when women were rarely able to do so, and broke some glass ceilings.
She eventually transitioned into sysadmin of the Unix computers that
she loved so much. Her first post to our mailing list started off:

Subject: New recruit from UNIX-land

I am planning to buy my "first" PC. After 15 years of UNIX I have
no wish to enter the world of point-&-prick &
never-being-able-to-find -where-the-files-are. Hence I plan to
attempt to install LINUX. Hopefully I would like it to have as much
as possible the "look & feel" of my beloved if ageing Indigo
workstation.

Here are my desires for configuring this system (first 4 are MANDATORY):
1. RUN EMACS RUN EMACS RUN EMACS RUN EMACS
2. Repeat the above.
3. X windows
4. LaTeX etc.
5. PERL etc
6. Decent compilers gcc, gdb, etc etc..
7. Various gnu goodies.
8. Net browser & email.

That quote should give you a sense of who she was and her style of
communication.

One of her taglines was:

***My computer exists to do exactly what "I" instruct it to do...not what
somebody else thought I should want..***

And another was:

"Give me this day my daily command line...."

She also had a family, a dog, and a bunch of other hobbies, such as
kayaking and music. It was always amazing to chat with her. She was
a little old lady who could talk knowledgably about science,
engineering, Unix / Linux, and music, while also being far more
physically active than most people a fraction of her age.

It was an honor to know her. I'll miss her.

Here is an obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/baltimoresun/name/pat-kingman-obituary?id=52181066

She died last year. Apologies for the delay in this email. It's a
difficult email to write, and I procrastinated.

- Morty