Pat LaMarche, recently tapped to co-host a new Maine talk radio show, remembers Franco-Americans being respected when she grew up in Providence, R.I.

It was a different story when her family moved to Bangor in the 1970s.

“I was confounded when the French kids I met in my new high school were often the subject of ribbing,” she said in a recent interview. “Some of my classmates even made disparaging comments about my intellectual abilities.”

LaMarche writes about her French and Irish heritage in the Franco-American anthology “Voyages” edited by Nelson Madore and Barry Rodrigue, in an article titled “Growing Up in a Francophobic World.”

LaMarche is known for her career in public service and politics. She ran against John Baldacci in the 2006 gubernatorial election as a Green Independent, and ran for vice president as a member of the Green Party in 2004.

Until a few weeks ago, LaMarche was living in Pennsylvania and working as vice president of community affairs at Safe Harbour, a nonprofit providing services to the homeless in Cumberland County, Pa.

Today, LaMarche begins her new job co-hosting a morning radio talk show on “The Pulse” with Don Cookson, a former television reporter. The show was announced by station owner Stephen King, the best-selling author and Bangor resident. The show will air from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on 103.1 FM and 620 AM.

LaMarche said she is “delighted” to be co-hosting the new talk show: “We want to create a radio show that says we care about our fellow man.”

Her experiences as a Franco-American made their mark. She said she abhors the practice of ridiculing and maligning folks based on cultural differences.

“My father raised us to respect the French. We even felt like we were better than everybody else. After all, Lafayette was a French Revolutionary War hero. Joan of Arc was a famous military woman. Even St. Patrick, the iconic patron saint of my mother’s Irish heritage, was originally from France,” she says.

Her family’s French ancestry is traced through the name Bricault dit Lamarche. Her father was the chief of pediatrics at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

She recalls her father speaking French to her grandparents and enjoying tourtiere every Christmas. Her Irish mother called them “French and Irish meat pies.”

LaMarche says her two children, Rebecca and John, studied French while attending school in Europe while she was in graduate school. Her daughter attended the Sorbonne, in Paris.

The show launches the day after the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attack, bringing back memories of her being on an Augusta radio show when the attacks happened.

“None of the morning shows went off the air that day,” she recalls. “It was a huge tragedy. We were on air that day with other broadcasters because, even though Maine wasn’t hit, we were supporting our people in our country,” she says.