Patricia Ann Frank

If you find humor in any of my remarks today, please laugh – Pat loved to laugh.

 

On October 23, 1950, Patricia Ann Headley was born in a Hospital in St. Joseph, Missouri to Paul E. and Rebecca J. Headley.

She spent the first seven years of her life on the family farm in northwest Missouri near the town of Maryville.

A brief segue – when I would have dinner with Paul, Becky and Pat and they were talking about recent developments in Missouri and people they knew and for which they had updates, frequently Paul would use the name “Force City” or “For City”. 

It was never quite clear to me exactly what Paul was saying.

I didn’t think much about it until many years later when we were back in Missouri to attend her Uncle Jim’s Funeral and Pat was showing me around where she grew up. We passed a town limit sign that said FORREST City.

A light bulb went on and I asked Pat if that was the “Force City” that her father was always mentioning, and she said it was.

So, Pat grew up around Maryville and Force City in northwest Missouri, and, by the way, it is pronounced Missour-uh and not Missour-ee – just ask Pat.

Many of Pat’s Aunts and Uncles on both sides of her family were farmers in this same general area.

Pat’s Mom and her Mom’s twin sister married brothers.

So she and her cousins were double cousins.

Don’t ask me about double cousins or first cousin once removed – I don’t know.

I thought when someone was removed, they were gone, but apparently not.

She spent until the age of seven in this area and when she was old enough, attended the White School.

It was called the White School because it was painted white.

There were 9 kids in the school – one in each of the first 5 grades and 4-6th graders.

Pat was the first grader.

When Pat was seven, Paul and Becky sold their interest in the farm and moved to Loveland, Colorado.

On their drive to Loveland, they stopped every 2-3 hours at gas stations along the way to plug in the freezer full of food which was in the trailer they were towing.

An acquaintance of theirs who had moved to Loveland earlier and was in real estate helped them buy 2-three unit apartment buildings.

He too was originally from around the Force City area.

They moved into one of the 800 square foot 2 bedroom apartments and thought they had arrived - windows that didn’t leak, indoor cold AND HOT running water, a gas stove, no big black snakes in the trees and someone to help pay the mortgage.

The apartments were located two blocks north of Garfield School in Loveland – THEE new Grade School in Loveland.

After Grade School, she attended Junior High School and then the “Old Bill Reed” High School before graduating from THEE New Loveland High School.

In High School she participated in numerous activities and even, as a sophomore, won First Place in a statewide Latin Club competition for a model of An Ancient Roman Home she had built.

When Pat was going to High School, Becky, her Mom worked as a cook in the school cafeteria at the “Old Bill Reed High School” and then transferred to Garfield Grade School where my Mother also worked in the cafeteria. 

I would stop by periodically to talk with my Mom and frequently would end up talking to Becky, whom I thought was a neat lady.

In High School Pat enjoyed and excelled in her art classes and working on the decorations for various sporting events, a precursor to her work later in life on Silent Auctions.

Pat graduated from High school and attended one quarter at DU and decided that College, at that time, was not for her and she went to work at Hewlett-Packard in Loveland.

I had joined the Air Force and had been stationed at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska and, while on leave before heading to my next assignment on Taiwan, stopped by to drop off a small gift I had purchased for Becky, Pat’s Mom.

Pat was home and answered the door, and unbeknownst to me, I became a marked man.

After I came home from Taiwan, Pat and I dated for a while and then we made the decision to get married and were married on September 7, 1969.

We just celebrated our 47th Anniversary.

 

We were married 2 days before I started school at CSU and so our honeymoon was a drive up the Buckhorn Road West of Loveland.

Some of the few photos we have of our Honeymoon are the rear ends of a bunch of cows as a cowboy led us through a herd a cattle that was being driven from high country pastures to their winter quarters.

 

Pat continued to work at HP and I continued at CSU.

Pat became pregnant with our son Lance, and after completing my second year at CSU, I moved to a 3/4 class load and worked 3/4 time at Albertsons.

Our son was born via Caesarean Section on September 29, 1971, and it was immediately apparent there were some problems.

4 of the 6 sutures in his skull had already closed allowing no room for brain growth, a condition known as Cranio Synostosis.

As soon as Pat and Lance were released from the Loveland Hospital, we went home, dropped off dirty clothes, picked up clean clothes and immediately headed for Children’s Hospital in Denver to have the bones in his head opened to allow brain growth.

His first surgery, when he was 8 days old, which opened two of the four closed sutures, was successful.

With the immediate crisis averted, the remaining two sutures were opened in a procedure several months later.

Both surgeries were successful and Lance fully recovered and grew up without any other related complications.

 

Our daughter Annie was born on June 2, 1973 and, thankfully, was a birth without the need for a trip to Children’s.

 

After I graduated from CSU, the four of us moved to Lakewood and I went to work for Arthur Young in Denver for a year and decided that the audit life was not for me.

After one year, I left AY and we moved back to Loveland where I went to work for Hewlett Packard.

The kids went to the local Loveland schools and Pat got involved in PTO.

After about 5 years, we moved to back Denver as HP had acquired a software company and needed an accountant.

Approximately 4 years later, HP spun the software company out and we chose to stay with HP and moved to Roseville, California.

We spent a year and a half in California and did not like it at all.

Pat said, you know you are in deep trouble if the local Dairy Queen runs out of Hot Fudge.

Also, the local Wells Fargo Bank cash machines were regularly out of cash before noon on Saturdays and they would not refill them because that would require they pay overtime to refill the machines.

 

An opportunity presented itself for us to move back to Denver and for me to the join the HP Software Spinout which I had previously left and to work again with Joe Peters and Don Kirkpatrick, with whom I had previously worked.

We were delighted to get back to Denver, so much so that as we checked in for our flight from California to Denver, I said to the attendant, 4 tickets for the Promised Land.

We were very fortunate in that Pat was able to be a Stay At Home Mom while our kids were in school, something she relished.

Things generally went well as the kids progressed through school until mid-1989.

Pat was finally, after 6 months of misdiagnosis, diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

It is amazing how a diagnosis of Cancer can be a relief.

She went through an initial course of chemo to try to shrink the mass in her kidney area without much success.

After evaluation and counsel and help from her Oncologist, we decided to pursue a bone marrow transplant.

Just an FYI, the term bone marrow transplant is somewhat of a misnomer – It is actually very heavy dose chemotherapy with bone marrow rescue – with an emphasis on the rescue.

The chemo is so strong that it kills the cancer cells, but it also destroys the bone marrow.

Pat’s transplant was autologous, meaning they reinfused her own marrow which had been harvested and cleaned before the chemo.

The transplant, while being physically devastating, was successful and Pat spent the next 3-4 years recovering, which she did very well.

The transplant was indescribably tough, but Pat was tougher.

Our kids, in the mean time, graduated from high school and attended college.

 

Our daughter attended college in Greeley and while there, she met and married her husband Eric Rosin.

A few years later, they adopted a little boy who had been diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

Eric and Annie have done a wonderful job of raising Jesse.

Jesse is now in a carpentry training/apprenticeship program and doing well.

 

Lance also attended college and has held a variety of jobs stateside and overseas, as well as volunteering with several Veterans organizations.

 

Pat and I became active in the Arapahoe County Republican Party and, while attending a Lincoln Day Fund Raising dinner, were asked if we would take over the preparation of the Silent Auction items for the next year’s Lincoln Day Dinner.

We looked around at the auction, and thought we can do this and do it much better, even though we had never been involved with a Silent Auction before.

We said, Yeah, we can do this and signed up.

The auction the next year went very well, so much so that Bo and Lynne Cottrell who had been working with Bonnie Carroll, the Executive Director of TAPS asked us if we would work with them on the Silent Auction for TAPS.

We agreed.

TAPS - The Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors - is a wonderful organization that helps the FAMILY MEMBERS of our military who have died while serving our country, regardless of the cause.

 

I need to take another segue here to give you a little insight into Pat’s character.

These are a couple of quick looks into her approach when she would take on a responsibility.

There was an old one-panel comic strip that used to appear in the newspaper.

The title of the comic was Crabby Road.

It pictured this shriveled-up chain-smoking old lady dressed in a ratty bathrobe and maybe 3 or 4 curlers in her thinning hair and we imagined a voice that sounded like extra course sandpaper.

The caption read – “There are two ways to do things – my way and my other way.”

The second insight is, I came home from work one day and Pat was all smiles and said, I found our sign - go in and look on your desk.

That sign is still on my desk and it reads – “I would agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.”

 

That attitude and her incredible endurance and internal strength were directed at the Annual TAPS fundraiser for which we would handle all the preparation for and putting on of the Silent Auction.

The first floor of the Frank household became the TAPS Silent Auction Production Facility from about April 1 to mid-June of each year for 8 years.

She would painstakingly prepare each and every display, most of the time spending 2-3 hours per display finding logos and information on the Internet and incorporating whatever items the donor had provided, and then crafting the displays to make them as attractive and bid-enticing as possible.

That would entail preparing between 125 and 170 displays for the Silent Auction each year.

Going back to the insight noted earlier, other people volunteered to help her, but none were willing to match the effort and creativity Pat put into her creations.

Each year we challenged each other to Kick-it-Up a notch and Pat always rose to and exceeded that challenge.

Pat was starting to tire after 8 years and we phased out of the Silent Auction portion and for 2 more years, Pat, Lance and I took care of trash at the Main TAPS Dinner Event.

We proudly named ourselves the White Trash Brigade.

After two years of being White Trash, we retired from TAPS.

 

Pat had one additional opportunity to apply her artistic talents to silent auctions.

The German American Chamber of Commerce – Colorado Chapter, of which I am the Treasurer and a Board member, had a Silent Auction in Beaver Creek to help raise funds for an apprenticeship program at Arapahoe Community College.

Pat prepared the Silent Auction Displays for that auction as well.

For several years, we also volunteered at the annual GACC Biergartenfest in July and the Christkindl Market.

The Christkindl Market generally runs from just after Thanksgiving to just before Christmas.

The Christkindl Market also accounted for about 90% of our annual alcohol consumption.

We both loved the Gluhwein that was served each year at the Market and made it a point to each get a mug each and every time we visited the Market which, in most years averaged about once a week, and in some years more.

There, we also volunteered on the Trash Brigade.

 

We truly enjoyed the get together's with my brothers, Roy, Rick and Dave  and their wives whether it was at my oldest brother Roy’s for an afternoon of shooting and dinner or one of the “Brother’s Dinners” our favorite of which was the Black Bear Inn in Lyons.

Hans and Annaliss Wyppler, the owners of the Black Bear Inn, had the audacity to retire and closed the restaurant.

They served many very excellent foods there, but our all-time favorite was the fried Camembert with Lingonberries – we really got hooked on Lingonberries.

 

Pat loved remodeling.

Her favorite shows were New Yankee Workshop, Home Time and This Old House.

She loved all the cool tools.

She did almost all of the remodeling in our home in Loveland and here in Denver as well.

One of Pat’s major projects was to remodel the kitchen/dining room in our current home.

She decided that the dining room was too small and pretty much useless and the Kitchen could use the space.

She got out her crowbar and hammer and went to work.

I remember coming home one evening and the drywall was off the studs on the wall between the kitchen and dining room and she was standing there hammer and crowbar in hand planning her next move to remove that wall.

I asked if the wall was load bearing – she assured me it was not.

I said, are you sure?

She said, well if you look at the way the wall studs are hooked into the ceiling – very poorly – I am sure it is not, and by the way if the bedroom ends up in the basement, we’ll know it was load bearing.

Of course, the wall was not load-bearing and Pat finished the job putting in a beautiful large open pantry in the east wall of the kitchen.

 

Pat and I had a similar philosophy as it relates to vacations, that being, why work extra hard for 3-4 weeks before a vacation to get ready to leave, spend the week or two on vacation wondering if things are going well at work, and then 3-4 more weeks after you get back from your “relaxing” vacation catching up.

As a result, we only took two multi-week vacations during the time we were married – one to Alaska and one to Germany.

We would take some long 3-day weekends, but only those two long vacations.

 

Pat and I enjoy John Denver’s music – not his political positions, but most of his music for us is exceptional.

One of the long weekend trips that Pat and I would really enjoy was our annual trip to Aspen.

After John Denver died in an airplane crash, a tribute concert was held each year for 15 years in Aspen at the Wheeler Opera House.

The concerts were put on by former members of John Denver’s band.

Pat and I attended all 15 concerts.

These musicians and singers are truly exceptional and the very best parts were, that if you bought VIP tickets, which we did for one performance each year, you were able to participate in the after performance reception which included the performers.

After an evening of fabulous music, Pat and I loved talking with all the performers.

 

Speaking of music, the first song you have heard today is the theme song from our favorite movie, The Odessa File.

The song is also our favorite Christmas song – Christmas Dream.

 

Late in 2013, Pat and I started talking about taking a trip to Germany to visit our ancestral homes.

We spent about nine months making many very hard decisions as to what, when and where we were going to spend our two week trip to Germany.

In addition to visiting far out cousins (Far Out is not a reference to John Denver), we also wanted to stay in a castle, which we did.

We flew into Munich, rented a car and proceeded on our self guided tour of South Central and Southwestern Germany.

One of our 2-night stops was at the Schlosshotel Götzenburg in Jagtshausen.

Pat fell in love with that Castle.

She really loved the décor in the Castle, especially the floor in the bar and the dining room which was oak herringbone.

She said, when we get home, all the floor coverings are coming up and herringbone oak is going down.

That desire was a bit beyond our budget, so she settled for searching for “Götzenburg -like” décor and finding accent pieces that were similar in design to the décor at the Castle.

 

Pat’s taste was eclectic - her main criterion was that it had to be well done.

She would look around our house and look at our German Nutcracker Collection, the German and other antiques, the old oak tables we found and had refinished, our other pieces of more modern style furniture and always said, I like this, this is comfortable.

 

Speaking of eclectic and well done, one of the items we both really liked was our small collection of Indian Pottery.

We had attended the Denver Indian Market each year in January for many years and had become friends with one of the Indian Potters – her name is Pahponee.

Pahponee’s ancestors are Kickapoo and Pottawatomie – Plains Indian Tribes.

Of the several hundred exhibitors at the Indian Market each year, Pat and I were always drawn back to Pahponee.

Her pots were simple, clean, elegant, beautiful clay, meaningful designs – from our perspective simply exceptional.

We would buy a total of 1-3 small pots each year from her at the Indian Market in January and the Pow Wow at The Fort near Morrison in May.

We thoroughly enjoyed our talks with Pahponee and her husband Greg.

 

As you can tell, Pat’s tastes and likes were very eclectic.

She also had a great sense of humor, although her humor was not quite as refined as mine.

I am of course talking about the 3 Stooges – and I am in particular talking about the real Curly – not Shemp nor Curly-Joe, who were very very poor substitutes for the real Curly.

Curly was simply a genius.

Somehow, and I could never grasp this, she did not see the humor – tis a puzzlement.

 

Pat and I enjoyed cooking.

Each year for Christmas, Lance would join us and we would bake about 10 different cookie recipes and make a couple of candy recipes.

The recipes were ones we had tried and proven over the years.

We would usually try one new recipe each year – some were keepers, others never made it out of our kitchen – the typical response to those recipes was, well it Sounded good.

We really enjoyed sharing our Christmas trays with friends and neighbors.

 

During her working career here in Denver, Pat worked 12 years at the Swedish Radiation Oncology Center in Admitting, and 10 years at Porter Hospital in Main Admissions.

She had a special knack for working very quickly and accurately, yet making each patient feel that they had her full attention and she was focused on getting them taken care of.

She could tell very quickly when people, especially the ones with Cancer, were very scared and she had a way of relating her own experiences to them and getting them to focus on “living their lives and not living their diseases” – this is a phrase that Pat coined.

Many patients and spouses of patients commented to her how her conversations with them had made a huge difference for them and helped them through their ordeal.

 

I must relate one more insight.

Pat and I were both always amazed by how a selected phrase or image or comment would immediately be added indelibly and irreversibly into our lexicons.

I am going to tell you our favorite joke – I will try to keep it as clean as I can for this Holy Place, but still convey the meaning very clearly.

A Texan is admitted to Harvard and is taking a self-guided tour of the campus.

He is unable to locate the library and stops a man on the Campus and asks, “Can you tell me where the library is at?”

The Harvardite looks at him with great disdain and says, “Sir, you are now at Harvard and at Harvard we never end a question with a preposition.”

The Texan, cool as a cucumber, says, “OK, let me rephrase, can you tell me where the library is at A**hole”?

You cannot imagine how many times that was added, albeit unspoken, most of the time, to the end of questions we were asked, or heard on television or in any other situation.

When we were together, and we would hear the proverbial question ending in a preposition, there would always be a momentary glance exchanged and we knew immediately and exactly what that glance was adding.

 

About 8 weeks ago, we went for an examination with Pat’s Oncologist, Dr. David Schrier, an absolutely wonderful doctor.

We thought the mass in her upper left thigh, although fast growing, was a reoccurrence of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, which, after her bone marrow transplant and a 12-year remission, had come back every 2-3 years but was treated very successfully each time.

By the way, when Pat was originally diagnosed, the general consensus was that she would have 5 years.

She lived for 27 years.

It turned out to be a whole different and rare cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma, a fast growing smooth muscle cancer.

In a very large majority of cases, it is found in children and young adults.

She began the Chemo Therapy regimen and the strength of the Chemo therapy needed to combat the Sarcoma coupled with her depressed immune system and the aggressiveness of the Sarcoma, led to severe complications which resulted in Septic Shock and in her death at 7:35 p.m. on Wednesday, October 12, 2016.

 

Pat was preceded in death by her father, Paul E. Headley, an infant brother, David Paul Headley who died at the age of one. A brother and sister, Harold Eugene Headley and Elizabeth Marie Headley were still born.

 

The words have not yet been created that can possibly express how much I will miss her – how much we all will miss her.

 

I Love you Babe.

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