Obituary of Patricia Myers

Pat Myers 1928 – 2024

Patricia Jean Lyons Myers (always called Pat) died on 14 February. Pat had many talents – painting, pottery, gardening, cookie baking – but her greatest talents were for teaching and learning and for friendship. She was one of a small group who established kindergartens in the Boise Public Schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

Pat was born in Eagle Rock, California. Her father was Daniel Lyons, a mechanical engineer originally from New York City. Her mother, Nell Baldwin Lyons, had grown up on a homestead in Northern California and trained as a teacher. Pat had two older brothers, Dan and Scott, whom she adored. They spent the summers at her grandparents’ house in Blue Lake, California, surrounded by forests.

Pat went to Eagle Rock Elementary School, starting in kindergarten, and then, after the family moved to Seattle. She attended Queen Anne High School from 1942 to 1946 and was valedictorian of her class. In 1946, she went to Pomona College in Claremont, California, and after two years she transferred to the University of Washington.  

Halfway through her senior year of high school she had met H. A. P. (Hap) Myers, and in 1950, just after they both graduated from college, they were married. For the next 25 years of her life, she moved wherever Hap’s career took them. They often talked about their children in terms of the career stage in which we were born: Nan during the Marines, Greg during medical school, Scott during residency, and Mark once we had arrived in Boise. 

When she was in Rochester, New York, she did teacher training in kindergarten. She was excited about the relaxed and open atmosphere, so different from later years of school. Sixteen years later, when the family was in Massachusetts, she did a Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education at Tufts University. 

When the family returned to Boise in 1973, she took a job as one of two teachers at the new kindergarten at Garfield School in South Boise. There were then only two public schools with kindergartens, as a pilot. She worked with a small group of other teachers and the educators who supported them, and they remained a close group long afterwards. From 1983 she moved to Liberty School, and worked with another close group of teachers she admired. She enjoyed doing home visits, at a time when that part of town still had many farms, and meeting the wide variety of parents of her pupils. 

When Pat retired from the Boise Public Schools in 1989, she started volunteering at the then new Discovery Center of Idaho, devising science projects for children. Again she worked with a close group of people interested in science education. 

Pat was an avid traveler, nearly always motivated by her curiosity: to attend a conference on Christian Education in Nairobi, or observe British early learning, or attend elder hostels, or take part in an exchange to Siberia. These travels led to a series of travel journals, and the journals led to an interest in watercolor painting that she pursued with friends for the rest of her life.

Besides her friends from school and colleges, and from her teaching, she had friends from St. Michael’s Episcopal Cathedral, which she attended for sixty-five years, from the Women’s Auxiliary of medical wives, from YMCA classes, and three book clubs (she was an avid reader). She and Hap welcomed exchange visitors, a seminarian, refugees, and others new to Boise. Later in her life, she made friends among her neighbors on Holly Street, and at the Terraces of Boise, to which she and Hap moved in 2018. She was curious about other people, yes, but also empathetic, and she was full of admiration for what her friends did and how they lived their lives. She said in a note “I’d like to be remembered for my smile, my warmth and caring, my listening and empathy and general optimistic and broad-minded attitude concerning disagreements.”

One group that was particularly important to her was a cookie club that started with a group of women baking for families at home. It developed over the decades into a close group as kids grew up, careers developed, and they moved away and came back. It was enormously important to her that they came to see her at The Terraces in December 2023. 

The house on Holly Street was the first she felt was theirs, after all the temporary houses that just fit the size of the family. She especially enjoyed having a small but carefully-planned garden. Her interest in gardens led to two garden tours with her daughter, daughter-in law, and granddaughter in England. She was seldom as happy as she was looking for new plants at Edwards’ nursery.

Pat was an avid tennis player, swimmer, and hiker, before her health stopped her. Then all her interest in sport was channelled into following the Boise State football team and following basketball and tennis on television. Days before she died she was commenting on substitutions as BSU defeated Air Force in basketball.

Pat was a wonderful mother, through all the challenges we provided. By her bed at the Terraces was a frame that showed photos of her children and their partners, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren. She was always eager to find out what the youngest members of the family were doing. When she made a note what she was proud of in her life, she listed kids, her relationship to kids’ spouses, her work as a teacher, and her “occasional success in art”.

Pat’s husband Hap died in 2020, soon after they celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary. She is survived by her children Nancy, Greg, Scott, and Mark, twelve grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. They appreciate the warm, thoughtful, personal care Pat received over the last two years from the Skilled Nursing staff at The Maple Village and all of the staff at The Terraces of Boise.

Funeral is at St. Michael’s Cathedral, Boise, at 1:00 on 22 March, 2024