Patricia Powers Estey

Wonderful, for 103 years.

Patty arrived before commercial radio and she left us last week, listening to a favorite author and playing Wordle, Quordle, and Globle on her tablet! She had a truly remarkable life that she shared with family and friends alike.

Perhaps it was her early life as an Army brat that developed her sense of adventure and love of travel. The first baby born at the Fort Sam Houston hospital to Peg (Grace) and Pop (Edward) Powers, at three years old she lived in the Philippines and visited China. As an adolescent, she took rides in bi-wing planes piloted by her father and spent a summer on Nantucket practicing dance with Isadora Duncan (The dance camp was not her thing). She learned how to ski prior to WWII in Switzerland and how to play golf at Wright-Patterson Field in Ohio. She was an accomplished sports woman throughout her life.

While attending college at George Washington University in 1942, she met and married her one great love, Francis Estey, naval Lieutenant JG, from Boston, MA. While he was away at war, she lived together with friends outside of Berkeley, CA delivering rural mail. They moved back to the East Coast after the war and began raising their family. In 1954, Frank contracted Hodgkin’s disease and Patty was left a widow with three very young children.

She devoted the rest of her years to making the best life possible for her family, blazing an independent path for the next 70 years. She took her three small children on a long summer adventure to Italy in 1956 and went back in 1960 to live for a year in Florence, Italy, culminating with a 10-week camping adventure throughout Western Europe. As a single woman with three children, this was quite a feat in that era. After that, every summer was spent at Lake Winnisquam, NH, swimming, boating, and camping. She was always up for an adventure! Each twist and turn was documented by the ever present camera(s), together with rolls and rolls offilm. Over the past decade, she compiled dozens of those pictures which she included in her autobiography, One Hundred Years - 1000 Memories

As the years passed and the kids grew into adults, Patty continued to look for the next experience, the next opportunity. Having designed and built a house in Vermont in 1963, she decided to leave New Jersey and move north permanently in 1972. (She would claim rights to being a Vermonter.) This allowed her imagination to really blossom. One season she built a habitat and raised 100 pheasants for a game club. Upon release, those birds flew straight between the hunters and couldn’t be shot. She was pleased about that because she’d had second thoughts! More opportunities arose. There was the purchase of a farmhouse on Rte 30 in Dorset which became a bed and breakfast. Along with her dogs and three goats, she relocated from that bed and breakfast to Dorset Hollow into what became known as Kneedeep Farm because, well, the barn was kneedeep in….. She became a master stenciler, taught classes, created a line of stencils, and opened the Pat Estey Stencil Studio in Manchester. She opened an antique book store and became a book binder. If anyone had a question about gardening or local wildlife, she was the go-to expert.

Those three goats were emblematic of her love for animals. She’d purchased them to raise, have kids, and sell the meat for Greek Easter celebrations. That did not happen; she was never meant to send any animal to slaughter (see pheasant story above). And they were just three of the many animals she had throughout her life - dogs, cats, chickens, a donkey, and small birds. Patty even drew the admiration of a male ringed-neck pheasant called Hector who’d follow along after her as she mowed the back 40 on her John Deere rider. She truly never met an animal she didn’t fall in love with and was a long time supporter of animal rescues. Having been a lifelong knitter, she used her last skeins of yarn to make small blankets that could be sent home with cat adopters.

She cherished and was cherished by three generations of children and thoroughly enjoyed all times spent with family at gatherings, large and small. Patty always knew which grandchild or great grandchild was playing what sport or singing in what musical, proud of all of them. She never took herself too seriously and enjoyed a good joke right along with her grandkids. When she said, “I love you, sweetie,” you knew she sincerely meant it. She also meant it when she advised against driving on snowy roads! She valued the simple things, great friends with shared interests, a Manhattan in the evening, a Coors Light, a tasty turkey braut with spicy catsup, crème brûlée, a golf tournament wrapping up on Sunday afternoon. Her great grandchildren depended on finding her sitting in her spot on the sofa with the pup Wilson or cat Sonny on her lap.

In her own words to her children, she penned these thoughts: “Maybe one or more of you could carry on a couple of my pet crusades - mainly fighting the rapid decline of the English language and good manners. I do think that good manners are the basis of peace and happiness for us all. If each of us would treat others with respect and consideration, and certainly not with malice, maybe hate could slowly retreat from the world we live in. Can’t blame me for some wishful thinking. And while we’re at it, maybe we can manage to present our ideas properly. You know - the grammar thing. It’s certainly not a life threatening problem, but wouldn’t it be nice?! Ah well, I grew up in a different time and things do change, that’s for sure.

I wish you all the luck and good fortune anyone could want and the strength and humor to deal with things when the going gets tough. Got to keep that sense of humor alive.” Carrying on her sense of humor, policing of grammar, and love of dogs are her 3 children Abbie (Donn), Kate, and Michael (Deb); 7 grandchildren Jill (Brink), Sarah (Rick), Robin (Josh), Matt (Magy), Curt (Tara), Fran, and Mike (Danielle); and 14 great-grandchildren Francesca, Alessia, Declan, Ethan, Farrah, Essa, Lucy, Isaac, Taylir, Cadence, Liam, Knox, Addison, and Riley.

For those who would like to honor Patty’s legacy (apart from using the English language correctly), memorials can be sent to:

Second Chance Animal Center, 1779 VT Route 7A, Arlington, VT 05250 (They request that you note - IMO Patty Estey - in the check’s memo line.)