Patricia Dent Trammell, 95, who was well known for her homemade whole wheat bread and her involvement in civic activities,
died June 11 of cardiac arrest at Collington Episcopal Life Care Community in Mitchellville.
Mrs. Trammell, who learned to cook 10 years after she married, sold her bread at the Montgomery Farm Woman's Cooperative
Market in Bethesda for 10 years until 1975.
After tasting a friend's homemade loaf, she became interested in organic ingredients and gave up commercially processed
flour. She bought 300-pound bags of whole grain from a Pennsylvania farmer who grew his crops without artificial chemicals,
fertilizers or sprays. Then she would grind the grain in her own mill.
In a small wing of her Bethesda home, built just to accommodate her breadmaking, she kept her burrstone mill and large
containers of wheat berries, rye berries and whole corn kernels. She baked almost every day, sometimes twice a day. Soon after
Mrs. Trammell started baking, she was selling a few loaves -- along with her home-ground flour -- to friends.
Mrs. Trammell's breadmaking became so popular that she was featured in a 1962 Washington Star Sunday story.
Making bread has certainly changed my life, she told the Star, because it's a very sociable activity. When she made her bread
deliveries, she was usually invited in for a cup of tea, she said, so most of my customers are my friends.
Mrs. Trammell's interest in organic ingredients went deeper than her own baking. She lobbied with environmentalist Rachel
Carson, author of Silent Spring (1962), and testified on Capitol Hill against the use of pesticides and additives in food.
Throughout her life, Mrs. Trammell was active in civic affairs in Montgomery County. During World War II, she knitted socks and
visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Later, she was a representative for Planned Parenthood of Montgomery County, a docent at Washington National Cathedral and
president of the county's thrift shop for two years. She also played an active role in a Washington welcome program and was an
advocate and volunteer for the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.
Mrs. Trammell was born in El Paso and lived there eight years before moving to Oakland, Calif. She came to the Washington
area at age 10 and graduated from Western High School. She began modeling in high school after a friend of her mother's,
Julius Garfinckel, asked her to model at his department store. Soon after, Frank Jelleff of Jelleff's department store also
requested that she model at his store.
She received a bachelor's degree in French from Swarthmore College, where her roommate was Molly Yard, a former president
of the National Organization for Women.
Mrs. Trammell's family said she maintained a sense of fashion, style and eloquence all her life. She was able to achieve the
perfect ensemble, be it for the White House, Queen Elizabeth II, a customer party or sailing on the Chesapeake Bay, which she
often did with her husband, family members said.
She enjoyed watercolor painting, ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, and needlepoint.
Her husband of 70 years, Charles Monroe Trammell Jr., died in 2006.
Survivors include a son, Charles Monroe Trammell III of Bethesda, three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.