Windsor Vt., —
The first of their two children, Pat was born July 20, 1938 in Ithaca, N.Y. to Dr. N. Stanley Lincoln and his wife Frida, RN. Their home was Biggs Memorial Hospital, a large facility dedicated to the treatment and study of tuberculosis whereof Dr. Lincoln had full charge. The hospital buildings overlook Cayuga Lake and are set amidst many acres of woodlands and flowering meadows; a brook runs through it and there is a pond. Frida, who had retired from nursing to raise a family, was a naturalist who delighted in all things of forest, field, water, and air. Pat had a naturally great curiosity and love of the outdoors which Frida assiduously cultivated. Toads, lizards, turtles, snakes, injured birds, plants, all came into the house to live for a time and be studied, nursed back to health if need be, then back outdoors again, probably to be captured again.
Frida was a skilled craftsman who painted landscapes and decorated furniture with fantastical painted birds, flowers, and symbols of affection and love, often with the help of Patty or Peter. Perhaps her most interesting works were Christmas tree ornaments of tiny complex dioramas on seasonal themes set in grottoes made out of blown eggshells. With Frida’s tutelage, Pat became a sharp critic of graphic and plastic arts.
But Pat’s special interest was the performing arts. She went through Ithaca schools, graduating high school in 1947. She went on to earn a BA from Hiram College in Ohio, where she was very active in theater as she had been in high school. She went from Hiram to Columbia School of Nursing in New York where she earned a BS degree and her RN. She soon married her college sweetheart, Jan Harford. The couple returned to his home in Vermont, where both found employment at the Medical Center in Burlington. They divorced not long after but remained friends.
In April 1968 she met Oren Hunt at a friend’s bridge table. They struck it off well from the start and were together as friends, lovers, husband and wife just nine weeks short of 50 years. Oren was working as a contract technical writer at IBM in Burlington. Unhappy with that work, he left Burlington to study at U Mass Boston with a view to entering teaching. Pat continued in Burlington. They visited back and forth as often as possible. Having earned his MEd, Oren took a position teaching in Lebanon, N.H., where Pat joined him. A year later he took a position in Ascutney, Vt. The couple bought a derelict house in Windsor, revitalized it to be their permanent homestead ever since.
Pat quickly found work in Windsor as one of the two Town Nurses (which in time became the much larger Visiting Nurses Association) then serving Windsor, West Windsor, and Cornish, N.H. on an appointment basis as well as on-call emergency duty. Most of their clients were elderly, frail, sick, geographically isolated, and lonely, needing nothing, really, so much as a little empathetic company. A good nurse in every way, Pat was famously good at that. The work days were always long, the traveling often difficult, especially in winter when unplowed back roads sometimes required the car be left and the visit completed by foot through or atop the snow — all this lugging a clumsy, heavy bag of supplies. Sad were the dawns when, having spent the night helping a client through life’s final agony, Pat returned home in tears and exhaustion.
Oren left the Ascutney position to take one in Hartland where he taught for some nine years. The couple bought an old RV, made it roadworthy, clean, and attractive and toured with it in all seasons, much of it through the American Southwest and the Canadian Maritimes — one summer taking two students with them. The couple thought of these times as their most active and happy, visiting far-away family (especially Pat’s, a lively bunch indeed). Back home, Pat and Oren were for many terms elected Windsor Justices of the Peace where Pat’s easy manner with the elderly and handicapped made her welcome everywhere to help the homebound to vote.
Pat found visiting nursing less attractive as the organization grew; more hours spent on paperwork and ever fewer at bedsides; Oren found teaching more of a punishment than a reward. Both resigned to take up management of Colonial Antiques Markets for three years in West Lebanon’s Colonial Plaza. The experience there helped Pat gain expertise in Early American fabrics, the most valuable things in a pre-Industrial home; in the art of rug hooking; in the work of tinsmiths. She learned to use 19th century tools and became an accomplished tinsmith producing salable work. For her own pleasure she took up interest in the artisans and products of hand-forged aluminum tableware so popular after WWII, “the poor man’s silver,” accumulating a fine collection.
In 2003 the couple retired altogether to enjoy their home and the treasures they had accumulated over the years. They married in 2003, each for the second time. Pat had no children, Oren had three from his first marriage. Children and stepmother bonded joyfully; they became Pat’s own as they took her on as loving mother.
Owing to a family history of dementia Pat always felt threatened by the failing; it seemed a hindrance to good life that she felt she would be unwilling to accept were it to be her destiny to have it thrust upon her. She and Oren planned for the possibility. In the late 1980’s symptoms of dementia began manifesting, diagnosed in 2013 as Alzheimer’s disease. Pat was also ever in pain from severe injuries owing to a car accident several years earlier. Her stamina failed steadily, she fatigued evermore quickly. But she kept up a credibly jaunty front. At the end, her gentle heart just gradually slowed to a peaceful stop. At long last she was relaxed and free of pain. Pat is survived by her husband Oren Hunt of Windsor; her brother Peter Lincoln and his wife Patrice of Middletown, Md.; their two children, Matthew P. Lincoln and his wife Erin and their three children of Boonsboro, Md, and Christine M. Lincoln-Milburn and her husband, Alistair Milburn and their three children of Chichester, So. Sussex, England; Oren’s daughter Kyle Hunt of Salem, N.Y.; daughter Stacey H. Mound and her husband, Robert Mound of Hoodsport, Wash.; and son Christian A. B. Hunt of Salem, N.Y.; and several cousins, nieces, and nephews.
There is to be neither funeral nor interment, but the family contemplates a memorial service when the fields are fresh and green. Those wishing to memorialize Pat’s life are encouraged to consider a donation to the Altzheimer’s Association of which she was an ardent supporter. Merry Patty-Annie, pretty girl, beautiful woman, elegant lady, how we loved you, we always shall.