Mary Patricia Castillo, a homemaker who was a financial supporter of Osher Lifetime Learning at the Johns Hopkins University, died in her sleep Wednesday at the Edenwald retirement community in Towson.
She was 99.
Mary Patricia Willis, who never used her first name, was born and spent her early years in Chesapeake City. She later moved to Baltimore, where she graduated in 1928 from Eastern High School. She then studied fashion design at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
In 1945, she married Cuban-born Eugenio Castillo y Borges, who had been Cuban consul general in Baltimore since 1938.
From 1947 to 1950, the couple lived in Santiago, Chile, where her husband was ad hoc director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, and then in Mexico City from 1950 to 1952, when he held another U.N. post.
In 1952, they moved to Havana after her husband was named vice president of the Banco Nacional de Cuba, where they lived until the Cuban revolution of 1959, when they fled the country.
He went to work that year for Phelps Dodge International Corp., and the couple lived in Mexico City, Tehran, Iran, and New York City, until 1977, when he retired and they moved to a home on Guilford Terrace in the city's Oakenshaw neighborhood. Her husband died in 1987.
"We've always loved Baltimore and we've never been out of touch, wherever in the world we lived Baltimoreans have come to see us," Mrs. Castillo told the old Sunday Sun Magazine in a 1973 interview.
Mrs. Castillo, who had a wide circle of friends in Baltimore, was an avid reader, museum-goer, essayist and letter writer.
"Most everyone says they 'learned a lot from Pat,'" said Margaret Osburn, a friend who is an instructor in memoir writing at the Johns Hopkins University.
"She had funny stories of encounters with Ernest Hemingway, Frida Kahlo, Jackie Kennedy, the Shah of Iran, and terrifying stories about the Cuban revolution," said Ms. Osburn, a friend of 20 years.
"But she didn't use these stories as collateral. She was more listener than raconteur. And whatever you brought to her attention about a new author or a world event, she treated it as a gift. You felt appreciated," Ms. Osburn said.
"So, when people say they learned a lot from her, I think they may be talking — not just about literature or the stock market or the world — but about how to be in the world, how to take stock of your situation, how to navigate your way," she said.
For years, Hopkins University had been the recipient of Mrs. Castillo and her husband's philanthropy.
In 1972, they created and endowed the Castillo Award in Economics, and also made charitable donations to the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine, the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the School for Professional Studies in Business and Education.
In 1992, she joined the Evergreen Society, a senior education program that was established in 1986 and is now Osher Lifetime Learning at Hopkins.
"Pat came to us in 1992. She was quite an interesting woman, very worldly and a global traveler," said Kathy Porsella, who is director of Osher Lifetime Learning.
"For the last 10 years, she has given $25,000 to Osher. She was very appreciative of Osher, and she wanted to make sure those who couldn't afford to come would be able," Ms. Porsella said.
By 2004, she had given more than a quarter-million dollars to the Osher program, according to the Evergreen Journal, a publication of the then-Johns Hopkins Evergreen Society.
In a 2003 interview with the Hopkins Loyalist, Mrs. Castillo explained her affection for Hopkins that dated to the early 1920s, when as a young girl she picked violets on the Homewood campus.
"The Hopkins people are very stimulating people, very interesting people," she said. "I have no immediate family, so I consider the Hopkins people I come in contact with as my family."
Pat and Robert Guanti have been close friends with Mrs. Castillo since 1983, when they rented a first-floor apartment in her Guilford Terrace home.
"If I had to characterize Pat, I'd say she was a very intellectual lady and a lifelong learner. She placed nothing in life higher than education," Mrs. Guanti said.
At Mrs. Castillo's request, there will be no services.
She is survived by her half-brother, John Hammond of Annapolis; a nephew and a niece.