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Ice skating comes as close to the freedom of flight as any self-propelled motion a human can make, and skating was Pat’s favorite pastime and remains connected to her love of the outdoors and nature. It began near her home in North Shore Acres. “Behind Mrs. Little’s house was a small pond. We’d call and ask “is the pond frozen yet.” She was also one of the best skaters on Scudder’s Pond by Rum Point.
Pat went to kindergarten in Glen Head, then to St. Boniface where the strict discipline often enforced by physical punishment scared her. She remembers teachers using a pack of playing cards, fanned slightly, to wack boys’ knuckles. Although she does not remember her own transgression, she says, “For some reason I found myself kneeling on the marble floor in front of Mary.” In high school she enjoyed close friends like Carole Brown, Kay Parks and Joanne La Pierre whose mother made “incredible fudge” for their sleepovers. “We went to the beach, to the movies. Your normal good girl kinds of things.” Her dad let her drive his MG for a while, but one day at the Pavillion several guys picked up the front wheels and leaned them up against the fence. End of MG driving for Pat.
When Pat and Carole Brown began to take confirmation classes at St. Boniface, her father would drop them off and pick them up two hours later. She recalls that one evening instead of walking into St. Boniface, they turned and walked down to the village social center, Dobkin’s soda fountain to spend the evening chatting with whoever was there. Two hours later as they returned to ST. B’s, there stood Father Gately on the sidewalk. “Carol says brightly, ‘Good evening Father Gately.’” She remembers being horrified, but not the consequences.
After graduation Pat “I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do.” She moved to Manhattan and attended the Laboratory Instute for Merchandising (LIM) in the heart of the fashion district to satisfy her bent for creative work. She went to work for photography studios as a stylist picking backgrounds and selecting and prepping models for magazine and mail order catalog displays. She learned how to use “paper clips and clothespins for a lot of good reasons no one sees.”
Her lifelong appetite for travel was whetted when her roommate and she went on a six week tour of Europe. When she came back she went to Central Park with a group to ice skate. By that time she could do some skate dancing. On the ice she met a recently discharged Navy veteran, Richard Miller. They married in 1962 with Carole Brown Muttee as one of the bridesmaids. Pat and Richard bought a stationery store in New Hyde Park on Long Island and operated that for two years. Their first son, Richard was born in 1963.
When her dad, whom she was very close to, died at age 50 she says, “I needed to get away from New York.” Richard had a brother in Charlotte, NC and when they visited him they fell in love with the location and decided to move. They both liked Charlotte for its easy access to both the coast and the mountains, and they bought a small mobile home at Surfside, SC for their coastal vacations. Richard opened a dry wall company and became a contractor for home improvements and small commercial work. Their daughter Christie was born in North Carolina in 1971. In 1977 Pat started work as an administrator and teaching assistant in a local Montessori school, and continued that work for twenty years until the public school system asked her to work in a pilot program that would include the first public Montessori school in NC. She worked there for ten years. “I loved my job and the children kept me young at heart. I still volunteer many hours a month.”
Pat had also started a little business of her own, Botanical Treasures, making unique clear glass plates with pressed flowers in them, some plates up to 18 inches in diameter. They became a best seller at the well known Stowe Botanical Gardens and she still makes some and sells occasionally at crafts exhibits.
Daughter Christie and husband Chris live in Cary, NC where she was a mortgage originator, and son Richard owns All Pro Painting in Monroe, NC. Pat’s husband suffered a stroke in 1997 that confined him to a wheelchair until he died in 2004. Once retired, Pat began to enjoy her freedom of movement. She went to Alaska in ’06, to Peru in ’07, and to Oregon’s high desert and coast in ’08. Always innovating, she continues to water paint and has begun to do finger print art for families, turning the family’s prints into a garden of colored flowers. Her lastest loves by far are her two grandchildren, Cole age 7 and Camryn age 5 who live in Cary, NC. Pat's travels included a trip back to Sea Cliff in the summer of 09 for a mini reunion with Carole Brown Muttee, Ruth Ahern Loeber, Ceil Snayd, Kay Parks Rice and Joanne LaPierre. She stayed with Carole and Pete Muttee in Sea Cliff and in Southhold with Kay Parks Rice. Later that fall Carole visited Pat in Charlotte, NC. I seemed like we'd just all seen each other a few years previously instead of 50+ years ago!
