Bernice Sisson, 83, a former cooking school owner and social activist

Bernice Shay Sisson, 83, of Chester, a former cooking school owner and social activist who shared her opinions on subjects from children's nutrition to the Iraq war, died of cancer Friday, Oct. 26, at home.

Even while bedridden, Mrs. Sisson was instructing health care workers how to make granola, her husband, Will Richan, said, and he overheard her lecturing them about the skills chefs need. She was "the cooking schoolmarm to the end," he said.

When her children were in elementary school in Swarthmore, Mrs. Sisson and other mothers helped develop improved home economics classes.

In the 1970s, she and a partner operated the Potpourri School of Cooking in Haverford, and for several years she prepared dishes that were photographed for the food pages of the Bulletin.

She also taught an Exceptional Breads class at Waterloo Gardens and a Pasta and Sauces class at a Center City restaurant.

Mrs. Sisson served on the home economics curriculum evaluation committee of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District and was on the home economics advisory committee of the School District of Philadelphia. She was an adviser to the Swarthmore High School Cooking Club and a founding member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

She was an excellent cook and had many specialties, her husband said. "My favorite was a lemon soufflé that stood about twice as high as the dish it was prepared in," he said.

She liked TV cooking shows featuring people who respected food, he said, and her heroine was Julia Child.

Until a few months ago, she was cooking pots of soup every week for the Food Ministry at Chester Eastside Ministries.

A social activist, Mrs. Sisson joined rallies urging the withdrawal of U.S. military advisers from El Salvador in the 1980s, and spent a night in jail in Washington when she demonstrated for the rights of the homeless. The demonstrators were arrested after they set up a mock-up of a house in the middle of a busy intersection.

She liked adventure, her husband said. In her late 60s, she drove 10,000 miles from Swarthmore to Alaska - alone.