Celebrated Voice of America Breakfast Show host Pat Gates Lynch died after a struggle with cancer Sunday at  her home in Fort Belvoir. From the mid-50s until 1969, Pat served for about 15 years as host and interviewer on the VOA Worldwide English Breakfast Show, which drew significant audiences around the world that even surpassed at times those of jazz impresario host Willis Conover.  She interviewed presidents, prime ministers and many famous figures in the arts and music during those years.   After VOA, Pat served as First Lady Pat Nixon’s press aide for radio and television from 1969 until 1974, and later was U.S. ambassador to Madagascar in the 1980s.  After returning home from her post in Africa, she became Director of Corporate Affairs at RFE/RL headquarters in Washington, retiring from that job in the late 1990s.  Pat Gates Lynch wrote a book on her experiences, “Thanks for Listening: High Adventures in Journalism and Diplomacy,” Countinghouse Press, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, 2008.   Of that book, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote in the introduction:  “This is a story full of life, of people, of a woman who created a splendid career for herself at a time when women were seldom heard as broadcasters.  The story is a reaffirmation of the progress of women in this country over the past fifty years.  It is a story I enjoyed.”