My Sister's Passing

 My sister, Patty Ruth Andrews, passed away on Christmas Day - December 25^th, 2023. 

She was the strongest, bravest, and most loyal human being  I have ever known.  I knew her all her life, birth to death – 83 years.  We were close friends all that time.

We grew up together, initially in Detroit Michigan and then we came across the country in a post WW-II migration to California, by car along Route 66. 

We settled in Willow Glen – always at the same   Willow Glen schools: Elementary, Junior High and High School, where she became the High School President.

 

Pat even joined me at the Univ of Arizona for a year where I introduced her to my old roommate, Nard Taiz.

As teens, we both worked at our father’s business, Industrial Tool in San Jose.  We had our separate lives through our marriages, but holidays were always a clarion call back to Willow Glen, quite often at Pat’s house.

Her strength shone through the travails she endured through her early life: divorce, loss of a child, and striving to forge a career in teaching winding up at West Valley College.  She always kept her family #1 through these roadblocks.

I remember a time when I “dropped” in on her at Hummingbird Lane, with half a dozen chess players from San Francisco, saying we just needed a place to crash before a big competition in Los Gatos.  She made us food and joined us with her son Christopher at the big meeting.

 She was brave because of her steadfast commitment to American Democracy.  It’s always easy to cave into consensus, but she had a set of principles that never gave an inch.  They served her well throughout her life.

When our parents had become successful with their business, they rented an apartment up on Nob Hill, which became a meeting place for us to visit SF together.

We often attended our High School reunions – she and I always the other’s date for the occasion.

Pat and I both traveled a great deal, and she often visited me in England while I worked there, as well as San Francisco, when I worked there.  Then her thing became gambling cruises as her retired life enjoyment.  I never joined in those activities, but we would meet at casinos whenever we needed to see each other and so we had breakfast all over the Bay Area.

As we aged, we relied on both telephone and the internet.  We spoke a dozen times a week these past twenty years. 

Loyalty to Family and Country were big with her. She always stood up with positives about her friends, family and always stood on the right-side of America’s experiment with Democracy.  Everyone who knew her, may well, at times in the future, ask, “What would Pat do,” when considering ethics, relationships, or the future.