 Patterson was the second woman elected to Congress from South Carolina in her own right after Elizabeth G. Van Exem (1938-1939); the previous three, Elizabeth Hawley Gasque, Willa L. Fulmer, and Corinne Boyd Riley, served as caretakers after their husbands died in office.She served on the House committees on Banking and Veterans Affairs, as well as the Select Committee on Hunger.Workman's father, W. D. Workman Jr., a journalist and author, had been her father's Republican opponent in the 1962 general election, when Johnston won his last term in the U.S. Senate.