American politician, a Congresswoman from Colorado from 1973 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, Schroeder was the first female U.S. Representative elected from Colorado. A hard worker and unpretentious, she wrote ground-breaking legislation. She first ran for Congress in 1972 while still raising two small children, remarking that, “I have a brain and a uterus and use both.”
A Harvard lawyer and eight-term Congresswoman, she also had a formidable gift for phrase, such as dubbing Ronald Reagan, “the Teflon president.” She was an opponent of Phyllis Schlafly and a strong supporter of the ERA.
Schroeder learned to fly as a kid and worked her way through school doing what her dad did, flying to crash sites to assess damage, attending the University of Colorado from 1969 to 1972. She met Jim Schroeder at Harvard and married him on 18 August 1962; they had two kids. He went into politics first. She taught school and worked as a field attorney.
She announced in July 1996 that she would leave the House at the end of her term for retirement at the age of 55 after 24 years in office at $75,000 per year.
Schroeder was named president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers in 1997 and served in that post for 11 years. She advocated for stronger copyright laws, supporting the government in Eldred v. Ashcroft and opposing Google’s plan to digitize books and post limited content online. She also criticized libraries for distributing electronic content without compensation to publishers, writers and others in the publishing industry.
Pat Schroeder died from complications of a stroke on 13 March 2023 at age 82 at a hospital in Celebration, Florida.
Link to Wikipedia biography