[3] Gillingham graduated from Belmont High School and the University of Southern California, and studied bacteriology in Munich, Zurich, and Vienna.

[4][5] After her second husband was arrested by the Nazis in 1942, van Delden continued their work with the Dutch resistance, transmitting messages, forging documents,[6] and smuggling maps under the code name "Sonneveer".

[17] In 1964, van Delden was Deputy Public Affairs Officer, U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in Bonn, when she won the Federal Woman's Award.

[18] In 1966, van Delden was offered as an example of an "overpaid officer" in a Congressional hearing on overseas operations, because her salary as deputy was greater than that of her immediate superior.

[20] "Pat often raised hackles among male officers, particularly her superiors, because she was smarter than most of them," recalled a colleague, G. Lewis Schmidt, in 1988, "and she was an absolute fountain of extremely good ideas.