 Pat,aged two,with sister,Joan,on a pony.  Pat, age eight, playing her marimba on her first radio gig.  Pat holding a copy of "Taking Care of Tucker" when it was first published  Pat on the book jacket of SIGNS & WONDERS Photo by David Stotzer "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau "Do what you can with what you have where you are." Theodore Roosevelt |
My LifeMost of my childhood was spent in a part of Hollywood, California, where many old film stars and movie moguls lived. Cecil B. DeMille and W.C. Fields were our neighbors. I worked in the radio industry as a child actress and attended Immaculate Heart High School, a local school for girls. After high school,I commuted to the University of Southern California as a day student and received my degree in English. My father was auditor-comptroller of Los Angeles County and my mother eventually wrote radio plays. There were three girls in our family and all of us were interested in writing. I was always working on poems and plays and drawing pictures of the people around me. During my earliest years, my grandfather was retired and would drop anything he was doing to read to us during the day. Everyone else in my family told stories. Bedtime stories rarely came from a book. We expected them to be original. Since my grandmother could never think of original characters, her tales always starred Mickey and Minnie Mouse. But these mice had amazing adventures on the high seas. My staid father's stories were rare and the ones we loved most. They always featured two brothers named Jan and Willy and an old sea captain. There was an annoying chant my sisters and I devised to beg for "Jan and Willy" stories when we felt we had been deprived of them for too long. Most of my adult life has been spent in New England where my husband, Wallace, and I have raised five children. During some of that time I also studied art at the DeCordova Museum School and Brandeis. I began writing children's books and poetry for publication about twenty five years ago. We now live in Gloucester, MA, in the house we built for the family many years ago at Wingaersheek Beach.This is where our six grandsons come to visit and where I maintain both a writing and painting studio.  Ipswich Bay in summer  Wingaersheek Beach, Gloucester,in winter. The Annisquam Lighthouse is in the distance. In the summer I like to walk along the ocean or swim in it. There's little surf here at that time of year, and the water is usually very cold and invigorating. One of my favorite things to do in the fall, winter and spring is to sing with a small chamber chorus called "Cantemus". |
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