On the morning of May 12, 2022, Alethea “Pat” Kelley Vaughan, passed away peacefully of natural causes comforted by her husband of 66 years and caregivers at A Touch of Love Care Home. Pat left us far too soon. She was 89 years old.
Pat grew up near Coxsackie, New York, daughter of Alethea and Ed Kelley, with one sister and 5 brothers. She learned to swim in the mile-wide Hudson River, lived with her family in a haunted house, and loved to watch lightning storms roll in through the Catskill Mountains.
Pat moved to Texas in 1954 to study Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. There she met her future husband, Joe B. Vaughan, Sr., studying Engineering at UT. After meeting Pat, he changed his major to Philosophy when she convinced him that discipline offered far more flexibility in interpreting reality than the rigid conclusions demanded by engineering (he minored in Engineering, eventually becoming a successful, and very philosophical rocket scientist).
They married in 1955 and raised a family of two sons and two daughters. They lived in Grand Prairie, Texas, where Pat championed many causes and efforts to enhance and improve the experiences and possibilities of her children and their friends. She was quick to support the wishes and aspirations of her children, and equally quick to support them if they didn’t want to acquiesce to local social pressures or implied compliance. She raised her children to be individuals, to question the norm, to honor humor, and to always seek creative alternatives to mindless, habitual obedience. She taught her children and their friends to think for themselves.
Pat was fearless. In the late 1960s, she drove with her family in a VW minibus to live for a year in Tucson, Arizona. She later drove her children in the same VW to spend the summer with their father in Dayton, Ohio, while he completed a project for the Air Force. Later, in the same minibus, Pat drove her children to visit family in Montana. And years after retiring the minibus, she drove with her daughter to see the Dakotas, and visit family in Wyoming. She took the National Census in 1970 to buy her son his first drum set, held her other son while a doctor stitched his football injury, created various ice-skating costumes for one daughter, and fiercely backed the other daughter in her rejection of being flung high into the air as part of some high school cheerleading acrobatic spectacle. She also rented and drove the small U-Hall flatbed truck each year allowing their friend Charlie Scott to fire his black powder cannon in the July 4th parade in downtown Grand Prairie.
Pat was a writer, a poet, a world class technical writer, and a prime mover in local enlightened thought circles.
Pat was survived by her husband Joe, son Joe Jr., daughters Laura and Patty, son in law Lance, granddaughter Meghan, grandson Lance, daughter in law Rhonda, and granddaughters Rachel, and Elizabeth. She was preceded in death by her son John.
She will be missed.
A Celebration of Pat's Life will be held on Friday, June 10, 2022, at 3 PM at Bluebonnet Hills Funeral Home located at 5725 Colleyville, Texas 76034.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.bluebonnethills.com for the Vaughan family.
COMPARTA UN OBITUARIO
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