Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 22:15:31 -0500
Reply-To: pdooley <psdooley@VERIZON.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: pdooley <psdooley@VERIZON.NET>
Subject: Re: NVC - On a Personal Note
In-Reply-To: <157289.3563.qm@web45110.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Malcolm, I am very sad to hear of your loss. Your wife seemed like a
wonderful person. Try to focus on the good times and happy memories until
you are reunited with her.
-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
Malcolm Stebbins
Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 7:35 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: NVC - On a Personal Note
Please forgive me, but on Fridays we sometimes share personal issues on this
vanagon list as over
the many years, we have become like family.
It is with great sadness, I inform you all that after a 16 month battle with
cancer, my wife
Patricia Baker died last Saturday evening at the palliative care unit of
Halifax's Victoria
General Hospital. She died peacefully, surrounded by family and friends.
She was 52!
As all who knew Pat will understand, she showed great strength of character
throughout this whole
ordeal; never angry, never bitter, always accommodating, and always thinking
of others needs
before her own. Patricia will be greatly missed by many people.
Patricia was smart (4.0 GPA for all of her Bachelor's, Master's and
Doctorate degrees), well
respected professionally (awarded the Sarah Shorten award by our Canadian
Assoc. of University
Teachers), she was 3 year president of our University Faculty Assoc. and a
published author. She
was kind, loving, selfless, self-deprecating, and absolutely scrupulous. We
had one of those rare
'soul-mate' or 'kindred spirit' relationships that most people can only hope
for.
For this list; Pat took to Westy camping like a duck to water. During our 16
years together, she
was with me through 2 vans: a 1986 French syncro westy that we bought in
Morocco and drove all
over Morocco and 3 trips throughout Europe. Then came my 1991 syncro westy
that we shipped to
Egypt and, during the year that we were there, drove all over Egypt. As if
that was not enough, we
then drove the van from Cairo to Amsterdam; though Jordan, Syria, Turkey,
Greece, and up through
Europe, 11 weeks and 10,000 kms. We also made 2 Canadian coast-to-coast
trips.
As a visual tribute to Pat, there are a few photos at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mstebbins/PresentPat Some are of Pat & the
vans.
I thought long and hard about posting this, and I realized that what I
really wanted to say is
that next time your van breaks down, don`t get angry, at least wife is THERE
to yell at you. :-)
Malcolm (Halifax, NS)
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