Roscoe Patrick Carney III

Funeral will take place at 11:00 A.M., January 20th at Mariposa Gardens Memorial Park, 6747 E. Broadway Road, Mesa, AZ 85206

Pat was born March 27, 1944, in Richmond Heights, MO, where his father was completing medical school at St. Louis University. He was the oldest of Roscoe Patrick Carney II and Mary Loyola Stegmaier Carney’s six children. After his father’s Army service, the family moved to Davenport, Iowa, where Pat graduated from St. Paul the Apostle Elementary School and Assumption High School. After briefly attending Marquette University, Pat enlisted in the Navy and was assigned to Fort Allen Naval Communication Center located in Puerto Rico, where he met Carmita, his wife for 56 years. After marrying Carmita, the couple became students at the University of Iowa where Pat earned a BA in Urban and Regional Planning and an MA in Anthropology. Pat began working in Cedar Rapids, IA as a City Planner before moving to Joplin, where he joined the Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission while Carmita was teaching at Missouri Southern State University. In 1987 he graduated from the University of Tulsa School of Law, earning a Juris Doctorate.

He is survived by his wife, Carmita; children Claire (Adam Tunstall) and Roscoe (Mika); grandson Luis Vidal; siblings Sharon (Bill Wirth), Kerry (Diane), Moira, Brian (Brenda); nieces and nephews Shaun (Stephanie), Byron (Stacey), Chandra (Jens Ljungblad), Greg; great nieces and nephews Dawson, Carina, Isabelle, Shaelynn and Roscoe Carney; step granddaughters, Ashlea (Skyler Powers), Victorea; step grandchildren Rhett, Teddy and Viviane Powers, as well as many Casteel and Stegmaier cousins. He was preceded in death by his parents, daughter Nina and brother Michael.

Growing up on Iowa Street in Davenport provided abundant shade in the summers from the arching canopy of elm trees, a multiplicity of neighborhood families and friends for interaction, and the leisure for both. Time was spent playing cops and robbers on bikes, reading stacks of comic books from Mike Rock’s collection, and for Pat and neighbor Allen Sears, time to produce magic shows for fun and profit. Swimming lessons at the YMCA, art classes and library visits easily accessed downtown Davenport via the Brady Street bus. The winter brought ice skating on the Vander Veer Park pond along with conversation in the hot house. Memorable vacations were spent with great-aunt Ruth in Dixon, IL, grandparents and Casteel cousins in Jefferson City, MO, with Stegmaier cousins on a lake in Wild Rose, WI, and with new friends at Camp Tivoli in WI. Friendships formed at St Paul the Apostle Elementary School and Assumption High School continued into adulthood.

Pat and family moved permanently to Arizona in 1989. There his teaching career began. He started with a position as temporary Bilingual Education Director then continued as a teacher at several schools in the Phoenix Union High School District: North, Carl Hayden, and Trevor Browne.

A dynamic World History and Geography teacher, Pat will be remembered most by his students for a creative technique he developed: he told his first period class at a new school that he’d been given the smartest class in the school to help him teach geography. Telling them he didn’t know much, he guided them into developing mnemonic devices to learn the nations of the world. Starting with South America, with an audio clip from Johnny Cash, he asked “If there's a guy named Sue, could there be a country named Guy-Ana?” Thereafter, students were off! They began to concoct vivid mnemonic devices to master the names and shapes of each of the countries in one class period! Within an hour, they’d come up with sentences to fit the countries within each continent.

Pat enjoyed traveling abroad. He visited and traveled in several counties in Latin America, Europe, in China, Japan, Russia, the Middle East, Mexico, Canada and throughout the Caribbean, including Cuba.

Who can forget Pat’s recollections of his trip with Carmita on the Trans-Siberian Railway? The 5,772 miles journey from Vladivostok to Moscow arranged by Dave Kelm, one of Pat’s son Roscoe’s Navy friends, who had spent two years as a graduate student in Russia. They stopped in many villages and cities where they learned fascinating details about the culture, people, history and land. Pat was fascinated by the springy ground of permafrost, permanently frozen soil that sinks in the summer heat and swells again in winter months.

Pat was deeply loved by his family, friends and students. He will be terribly missed!

A celebration of life for Roscoe will be held Saturday, January 20, 2024 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at Mariposa Gardens Memorial Park and Funeral Home, 400 South Power Road, Mesa, AZ 85206, followed by a reception from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM.