SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Anita Hoffman, who helped husband Abbie Hoffman plot the most memorable pranks of the Yippie movement and later kept him hidden for years from the FBI, has died of breast cancer. She was 56.
Ms. Hoffman died Sunday afternoon at a friend's home in San Francisco, three years after she learned she had cancer, said her sister, Truusje Kushner."She felt she had a very full life," her sister said. "As horrible as it was that she had this fatal illness, it wasn't as if she hadn't lived. She felt she had a full life and no regrets."
Ms. Hoffman helped Abbie disrupt the New York Stock Exchange by throwing money on the trading floor, encircling the Pentagon in a protest against the Vietnam War and planning the demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
In one of her most audacious moves, she went to Algeria to meet with Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver and tried to forge a coalition between the Panthers and the Yippies.
"She was shocked by Cleaver's dictatorial and misogynist behavior," biographer Marty Jezer said, and "escaped Cleaver's authority by climbing out a window, talking her way through customs and flying to Paris."
Ms. Hoffman may be most remembered, however, for how she supported Hoffman for years while he lived underground to escape drug charges, and for raising their son, America.
"The FBI was crawling around everywhere," Kushner said. "She, for years, was bringing up their son and she was Abbie's conduit to the world, using mail drops to send him money and making sure he was taken care of."