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"I have often thought about her and I am sure I could not have done what she did, had I been in her circumstances," Fitzpatrick wrote in a letter to the editor from her home in Ellicott City, Md., near Baltimore.

"She certainly deserves the recognition that Greensboro (Grimsley) High is giving her."

Fitzpatrick, 66, a retired bookkeeper, did note in her letter that "while I am sure there were some unpleasant incidents at school, the majority of students were not involved in them."

Yet there may have been more unpleasantness than she initially believed, she conceded in a telephone interview last week. She simply hadn't seen it.

For instance, her sister-in-law, who also attended Greensboro Senior, recalls a group of boys tossing toilet paper at Bradley.

But not everyone chose either to ignore or taunt Bradley, Fitzpatrick said. As student body vice president that year and a member of the Honor Society, she was part of a group "that definitely didn't want things to get out of hand with this. All of us made an effort to speak to her and to draw [Bradley] out a little.

"She was small and shy and didn't look at people because I'm sure she was afraid."

Unlike Abraham, Fitzpatrick will miss this month's tribute. But she credits Bradley with opening her eyes.

Before Bradley arrived, she admitted, she'd never given the realities of segregation much thought. "I honestly don't think many people thought about it," she said, "that there was a separate school for black students."

In fact, Fitzpatrick's only contact with black people had involved a few who worked with her grandfather, who was in charge of grounds maintenance at Woman's College, now UNCG. "I didn't know any young black people," she said. "I didn't know a single one."

Fitzpatrick went on to enroll at Woman's College, where there were black students, and to participate in a candlelight vigil in support of the 1960 Woolworth sit-ins. "We were considered a complacent generation that didn't do those types of things — that didn't get involved," she said.

She credits Bradley with helping to open her eyes.
She does wonder, however, if Bradley acted on her own or was recruited by a third party to attend Greensboro Senior. "We didn't think it was fair that she was by herself. It was definitely our feeling that this was a test case."

Does it matter? she was asked.

She paused.

"Well, no," she said. "Not really."