My dive into media coverage on war, protests and the muddy state of the real people's home front was interrupted this weekend by a news flash that Rep. Patsy Mink, D-Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman and the first woman of color to be elected to Congress, was dead. She is definitely an American hero for the times in which we live.

Rep. Mink came out of immigrant roots in Hawaii, survived and thrived through the anti-Japanese era, the women-in-the-kitchen and colored-in-the-back era. As a driving advocate who remained true to her principles she put her mark on significant legislation for the rights and well being of women and families.

I first met Patsy Mink on a few sheets of paper that a teacher had given me as part of a "find-a-career" assignment. Looking through the faces of representatives and senators, I was hard-pressed to find a "different" face among the nation's state or national leaders.

I grew up in the Midwest, where plentiful and hazardous auto industry jobs supplied many African-American, Latino and other immigrant, working-class families with enough money to send their kids to at least a state college. Even though the civil rights movement was going on in the South, in the small towns around me, I developed my steel nerves to survive the glares from phalanxes of white students and adults when, as a member of my school's debate team, I carried my boxes of note cards into the competing school.

It was the color thing. Then it was the "woman" thing. Then there was Mink. Information on Mink was not easily accessible in my small town, but her face was an inspiration, even though she was in Hawaii.

A true-to-life liberal, Mink was often described as working outside the mainstream of her Democratic Party. Hers is an American story that has remained contemporary. Her grandparents, as Japanese immigrants, made a living in the sugar industry on Maui. She was growing up when World War II broke out and it was not a good time to be Japanese in America.

SHE HAD TO have been remarkably savvy to win a high school election in Hawaii in 1944, to become class president by, according to the Women's History Project, building coalitions. When she tried to enter the University of Nebraska, she discovered the "international/colored" dorm. She tackled it and broke the discrimination policy.

When it was time for her to pursue medical school in 1948 the 20 schools she applied to did not accept women. She told Jade Magazine in 1999, "I wish someone had told me then that medical schools in the United States didn't admit women students, except for one all-female school."

She switched her dream to law school, and got into the University of Chicago as a "foreign student." She decided to take her J.D. without telling the educators that Hawaii was a part of the United States. Degree in hand, she couldn't find a Chicago law firm that would let her in the door.

Eventually, she went back to Hawaii, to become the first Asian-American woman to practice law there and to launch a political career at a time when a wave of second-generation Japanese-Americans were entering politics. They fueled a historical turnover of control in Hawaiian politics, from Republican to Democrat. Mink would serve Hawaii in the territorial house and later as a U.S. representative in Washington for 12 terms.

In this political season of 2002, women represent both the Democrat and Republican parties in the November race for governor of the state of Hawaii. Mink was expected to win re-election to the House, and it is predicted that she will be elected posthumously, out of voters' respect for her place in history.

AS HER political success rose, her actions remained inspired by her beginnings. She was opposed to the Vietnam War early on, and traveled to Paris during the Paris Peace Talks with the late women's rights warrior, the bellicose Bella Abzug.

Mink helped to write Title IX of the Education Act in 1972, mandating gender equality in federally funded institutions and activities. It opened doors for women in academics and sports, increasing scholarship money for women from $100,000 to $179 million in 1997. She was an advocate of federal investment in childcare and early childhood education programs.

She is quoted in the Congressional Record in July of this year, speaking up to support legislation to impose criminal penalties for corporate wrongs, naming Enron, Adelphia and WorldCom. In the same month she spoke on the Homeland Security Act, warning Congress that undermining the Freedom of Information Act beyond the security exemptions that it has already would keep the American public and its representatives from being informed about what their government is doing.

"It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority . . . but it is more often more important to be ahead of the majority and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary," says Rep. Mink on her legislative website.

At age 74, her story remained contemporary.

Victoria Mares-Hershey is director of development at Portland West. She also chairs the Maine State Refugee Advisory Council and is a founder and the director of the Institute for Practical Democracy.

Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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