Margaret Patton, 1960 - 2005
Patton: A wonderful woman, teacher remembered
[Note: The above link no longer works. I recognize this and I've emailed the source for it, in hopes of getting the text to post here and permission to post it here. In the meantime, imagine a newspaper article full of remembrances of a wonderful High School teacher. You'll not catch some of the personal flavor of this article, but it's the best we can do. - added July 3, 2006]
I knew Margaret Patton, this sounds like her.
It's been a long time. My guess is that I last saw her 25 years ago, around 1980, in Bloomington, Indiana. We both went to Indiana University there.
I do distinctly recall having a phone conversation with her a few years later, after I'd left the area. I probably looked her up when I was in town. She had a memorable voice and I remember that voice from a phone conversation where we talked about some things that happened after I'd left Bloomington. But I can't place that phone conversation in time exactly.
How do I remember Margaret? I remember beautiful long hair, seasonally more or less blond depending on the effects of the sun on it. Her favorite outfits included denim overalls. Her voice, that's someting you can't forget. Throaty and expressive, I remember she made a great explosion sound from the back of her throat. She'd say something like "...and then things just went PPEGHHH!" She had an infectuous laugh which usually followed one of these explosions. Her smile and laugh just made everyone around feel good.
I'd completely lost track of her over the years. I'd meant to look her up, find out what's happened in all those years, but I never did.
I don't know how close you would judge us to be. We hung out quite a bit one spring and early summer. There was a time when we were part of a group of kids who did theater in Bedford and somehow, the others all went different ways, leaving it just down to us for one spring. We'd take walks and talk about things and just hang out, listening to music in her great old limestone house in Bedford, very near the old high school. I remember first hearing a Steve Martin comedy album there. It was really funny at the time. Remember the bit, "How to make a Million Dollars and never pay any taxes?" I think I heard that first at Margaret's house.
That would have been the spring and early summer of 1978. I was a freshman, going on sophomore, at IU at the time, still living at home in Bedford and commuting to school in Bloomington, but I was moving to Bloomington for the summer semester. Margaret would be starting at IU that fall also. During my freshman year, I'd done some theatre in Bedford and that was fun, but that was over. That spring and summer, neither one of us had jobs or cars, so we just hung out. I remember spending some time at a donut shop near her house.
I don't remember what we talked about that spring, not very much. I would have been 19 and those would have been the days when I knew everything. Surely I've forgotten a lot by now.
I remember gossiping a lot about people we knew well, nothing that's of interest to anybody now. I can be pretty brutal when talking about other people, but I remember Margaret turning it aside, softening it into observations about the humor you can find everywhere.
We'd known each other for a few years at this point. We'd first met my junior year in high school, when we were both in the cast of You Can't Take it With You. I was Paul, the father, and I believe that Margaret played one of the daughters, not the romantic lead daughter, but the other one, but it's possible that Margaret played Paul's wife. You can get to know people quickly working in a cast together and Margaret and I and a few others clicked. [update 09/19/2005 - In reviewing an old press clipping from those days, it appears that Margaret was not in the cast. I do recall Margaret was around while we were rehearsing and running the play. I believe she worked in the crew, the lights and the like. I guess my memory isn't what it used to be]
But, my junior and senior years of high school, we didn't hang out that much, really. She was involved in a lot of things that I wasn't and I had my separate interests. Margaret was working pretty hard those days on becoming a good clown. Her dream was attending Clown College in Florida. She worked hard in all the skills necessary to being a good clown and I could tell you, from where I sat, she was pretty good. She could juggle well, knew how to do the makeup, was an excellent mime... She was good at acrobatics, too, but she busted her elbow really badly one day - I remember she was in a cast for many months - in practicing her tumbling and then maybe she lost her nerve to do much tumbling after that. She told me that she gave up the dream of Clown College, because the entry auditions were very selective and she thought she needed tumbling skills to succeed.
I think she spent some time then looking for a new dream. From what the kids are saying from Anderson High School in the link above, she found it and lived it.
We hung out some at IU together, but not too much. A running joke was how I dragged her over to the computer center one night to print out her biorhythms on a line-printer. Neither one of us believed that biorhythms meant anything, but we were both geekily fascinated by the process of producing them on a computer, a big honking super-computer from the late 60's.
I know she loved animals, I remember cats and I seem to recall and old dog around her house in Bedford. I vaguely remember that there were cats there even though someone was allergic to cats. She reporting having a lot of fun working at Girl Scout Camp one summer. At IU, I met her one day outside the apartment of a guy I knew to be into biology, so I would guess she was going in that direction back then, but we never really talked about biology. We were growing apart pretty quickly after her freshman year just as a natural process of finding our own interests and groups of friends.
Oh, and there was always music around her house. I remember her older brother was the best trombone player in the high school band when I was the incoming worst freshman trombonist. I quit before my freshman year, I just wasn't that interested in it to work hard enough to make up for my lack of aptitude. The Pattons were a musical family. Margaret played several instruments, I believe, but she was more interested in theater and becoming a clown.
Well, that about wraps up everything I can say about our past. Maybe I haven't said enough, but there's no way I could say enough.
I think a lot of what you might find about Margaret will be said by her students. I thought that this perspective might be good for some of those students. It's hard to imagine an adult, an authority figure, being your age, but they were, of course.
I've missed her in my life for all these years without doing anything about it. I'm sure my loss would be much greater had I renewed contact, but I regret not renewing that contact just the same. I don't mean to compare my loss to that of those who were close to her now. My heart goes out to all of you out there.
I didn't attend the funeral. I just learned about her death last Friday. It's strange. I was at work, just a few miles away from the stretch of highway where it happened. I'd heard about a terrible accident, involving a semi-truck carrying food oil, but I didn't read the press reports. On Friday morning August 12 - 9 days after the accident -for some unknown reason, I did a google search for "Margaret Patton" and the first hit began "Margaret A. Patton Margaret A. Patton Jan. 22, 1960 - Aug. 3, 2005". That sent a chill through me, I realized that the birthdate would be about right, so I clicked the link to find what had happened. I guess I'd heard somewhere that she'd married and had children, but I knew no more than that. I had no idea she was a school teacher or lived in Anderson. Someone at work was talking about the bad accident and said that two people from Anderson, Indiana had died and I commented that I was born in Anderson (hadn't been there since I was 3). It's all so odd and eerie somehow, like a dream.
(I posted an earlier version of the above, but I recalled some small details better and I edited it on 8/17. Added a further revision on 9/19, noted above).
[Note: The above link no longer works. I recognize this and I've emailed the source for it, in hopes of getting the text to post here and permission to post it here. In the meantime, imagine a newspaper article full of remembrances of a wonderful High School teacher. You'll not catch some of the personal flavor of this article, but it's the best we can do. - added July 3, 2006]
I knew Margaret Patton, this sounds like her.
It's been a long time. My guess is that I last saw her 25 years ago, around 1980, in Bloomington, Indiana. We both went to Indiana University there.
I do distinctly recall having a phone conversation with her a few years later, after I'd left the area. I probably looked her up when I was in town. She had a memorable voice and I remember that voice from a phone conversation where we talked about some things that happened after I'd left Bloomington. But I can't place that phone conversation in time exactly.
How do I remember Margaret? I remember beautiful long hair, seasonally more or less blond depending on the effects of the sun on it. Her favorite outfits included denim overalls. Her voice, that's someting you can't forget. Throaty and expressive, I remember she made a great explosion sound from the back of her throat. She'd say something like "...and then things just went PPEGHHH!" She had an infectuous laugh which usually followed one of these explosions. Her smile and laugh just made everyone around feel good.
I'd completely lost track of her over the years. I'd meant to look her up, find out what's happened in all those years, but I never did.
I don't know how close you would judge us to be. We hung out quite a bit one spring and early summer. There was a time when we were part of a group of kids who did theater in Bedford and somehow, the others all went different ways, leaving it just down to us for one spring. We'd take walks and talk about things and just hang out, listening to music in her great old limestone house in Bedford, very near the old high school. I remember first hearing a Steve Martin comedy album there. It was really funny at the time. Remember the bit, "How to make a Million Dollars and never pay any taxes?" I think I heard that first at Margaret's house.
That would have been the spring and early summer of 1978. I was a freshman, going on sophomore, at IU at the time, still living at home in Bedford and commuting to school in Bloomington, but I was moving to Bloomington for the summer semester. Margaret would be starting at IU that fall also. During my freshman year, I'd done some theatre in Bedford and that was fun, but that was over. That spring and summer, neither one of us had jobs or cars, so we just hung out. I remember spending some time at a donut shop near her house.
I don't remember what we talked about that spring, not very much. I would have been 19 and those would have been the days when I knew everything. Surely I've forgotten a lot by now.
I remember gossiping a lot about people we knew well, nothing that's of interest to anybody now. I can be pretty brutal when talking about other people, but I remember Margaret turning it aside, softening it into observations about the humor you can find everywhere.
We'd known each other for a few years at this point. We'd first met my junior year in high school, when we were both in the cast of You Can't Take it With You. I was Paul, the father, and I believe that Margaret played one of the daughters, not the romantic lead daughter, but the other one, but it's possible that Margaret played Paul's wife. You can get to know people quickly working in a cast together and Margaret and I and a few others clicked. [update 09/19/2005 - In reviewing an old press clipping from those days, it appears that Margaret was not in the cast. I do recall Margaret was around while we were rehearsing and running the play. I believe she worked in the crew, the lights and the like. I guess my memory isn't what it used to be]
But, my junior and senior years of high school, we didn't hang out that much, really. She was involved in a lot of things that I wasn't and I had my separate interests. Margaret was working pretty hard those days on becoming a good clown. Her dream was attending Clown College in Florida. She worked hard in all the skills necessary to being a good clown and I could tell you, from where I sat, she was pretty good. She could juggle well, knew how to do the makeup, was an excellent mime... She was good at acrobatics, too, but she busted her elbow really badly one day - I remember she was in a cast for many months - in practicing her tumbling and then maybe she lost her nerve to do much tumbling after that. She told me that she gave up the dream of Clown College, because the entry auditions were very selective and she thought she needed tumbling skills to succeed.
I think she spent some time then looking for a new dream. From what the kids are saying from Anderson High School in the link above, she found it and lived it.
We hung out some at IU together, but not too much. A running joke was how I dragged her over to the computer center one night to print out her biorhythms on a line-printer. Neither one of us believed that biorhythms meant anything, but we were both geekily fascinated by the process of producing them on a computer, a big honking super-computer from the late 60's.
I know she loved animals, I remember cats and I seem to recall and old dog around her house in Bedford. I vaguely remember that there were cats there even though someone was allergic to cats. She reporting having a lot of fun working at Girl Scout Camp one summer. At IU, I met her one day outside the apartment of a guy I knew to be into biology, so I would guess she was going in that direction back then, but we never really talked about biology. We were growing apart pretty quickly after her freshman year just as a natural process of finding our own interests and groups of friends.
Oh, and there was always music around her house. I remember her older brother was the best trombone player in the high school band when I was the incoming worst freshman trombonist. I quit before my freshman year, I just wasn't that interested in it to work hard enough to make up for my lack of aptitude. The Pattons were a musical family. Margaret played several instruments, I believe, but she was more interested in theater and becoming a clown.
Well, that about wraps up everything I can say about our past. Maybe I haven't said enough, but there's no way I could say enough.
I think a lot of what you might find about Margaret will be said by her students. I thought that this perspective might be good for some of those students. It's hard to imagine an adult, an authority figure, being your age, but they were, of course.
I've missed her in my life for all these years without doing anything about it. I'm sure my loss would be much greater had I renewed contact, but I regret not renewing that contact just the same. I don't mean to compare my loss to that of those who were close to her now. My heart goes out to all of you out there.
I didn't attend the funeral. I just learned about her death last Friday. It's strange. I was at work, just a few miles away from the stretch of highway where it happened. I'd heard about a terrible accident, involving a semi-truck carrying food oil, but I didn't read the press reports. On Friday morning August 12 - 9 days after the accident -for some unknown reason, I did a google search for "Margaret Patton" and the first hit began "Margaret A. Patton Margaret A. Patton Jan. 22, 1960 - Aug. 3, 2005". That sent a chill through me, I realized that the birthdate would be about right, so I clicked the link to find what had happened. I guess I'd heard somewhere that she'd married and had children, but I knew no more than that. I had no idea she was a school teacher or lived in Anderson. Someone at work was talking about the bad accident and said that two people from Anderson, Indiana had died and I commented that I was born in Anderson (hadn't been there since I was 3). It's all so odd and eerie somehow, like a dream.
(I posted an earlier version of the above, but I recalled some small details better and I edited it on 8/17. Added a further revision on 9/19, noted above).
2 Comments:
Thank you for this wonderful tribute Jordan. It means so much to all of us when we read the memories that others have of Meg. Our entire family was very touched when we stumbled across this entry. Friendships like this are a part of who we are...I'm sure that Meg thought of you often and fondly.
Katherine (Patton) Fisher
kfisher119@aol.com
meg was like a mom to me.me and her daughter amelia are bestfriends even though she's not in anderson anymore.i talk to her everynight.i got a tattoo in rememberance for meg.i love and miss her so much.
Ashley
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