[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[House]
[Pages 1046-1047]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                HONORING THE LIFE OF PATRICIA A. CORBETT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2007, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Schmidt) is recognized 
during morning-hour debate for 5 minutes.

[[Page 1047]]


  Mrs. SCHMIDT. Mr. Speaker, this morning when I woke up and read the 
clips from Cincinnati's The Enquirer, the headline said, ``Cincinnati 
Philanthropist Dies.'' It should have read, ``Cincinnati's Best Friend 
Dies.'' We have lost a great friend of the arts, Patricia Corbett.
  When we say the name Patricia Corbett in Cincinnati, we don't have to 
explain who she is. Her name appears on buildings: the University of 
Cincinnati Performing Arts building, the Northern Kentucky Arts 
Performing Center, Music Hall, Riverbend. And in a few short months, 
the Cincinnati public schools new Performing Arts Center will again 
bear her name.
  But it is not just the buildings that she so actively got involved in 
and helped build. It's also what she did for the arts itself.
  The opera, the symphony, the Pops, the ballet, the May Festival all 
owe a deep gratitude to the financial support that this woman gave. Her 
generosity to the arts went beyond the boundaries of Cincinnati.
  In my own local town that I grew up in, Loveland, Ohio, we received a 
Patricia Corbett award, and now we have a stage company that has a 
small portion of the arts for our local residents to benefit from.
  There are so many people in the newspaper today that talked about 
what a figure she was. But the one that brought to my mind the most was 
a woman by the name of Martha Winfrey of Westwood who worked as an 
usher at Music Hall, and she conveyed the kind of kindness that 
Patricia Corbett had that we don't know about. At Christmas, she would 
hand envelopes to the ushers and say, ``Just be quiet with these.'' She 
had the most prestigious box at Music Hall, Box 5, and when it got 
crowded, she'd say to Martha, ``I don't need to sit here. Let somebody 
else sit here instead of me,'' and she'd stand out in the hall and 
listen to the performance.
  She didn't like people to know how old she was. I'm going to be kind 
and not tell you, since my own mother never wanted anyone to know how 
old she was. But we were blessed for many years to have Patricia 
Corbett be our gracious benefactor.
  It is said over $65 million from the Corbetts were given to enrich 
the lives of the citizens of greater Cincinnati. I was one of those 
citizens that benefited not from just her generosity, but her kindness. 
I had the pleasure to meet her on several occasions. Her warm smile, 
her gentle hand will be a lasting memory.
  A few weeks ago, we lost Joni Herschede, another friend of the arts. 
And now we've lost the Grande Dame. I only hope that they are in heaven 
enjoying the harps of the angels and that they will continue to smile 
down on us in Cincinnati.

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