Although Patty was born in Connecticut, schooled in New Jersey, and lived most of her adult life in Miami, FL and Charleston, SC, she considered herself temperamentally to be a New Yorker. Her teenage forays into Greenwich Village gave her an exposure to jazz and the cosmopolitan counter-culture of the 1950s that informed the rest of her life.
She started out traveling in the airline industry as a glamorous young hostess, visiting Cuba, Europe and Asia, and never stopped exploring until Covid grounded her in 2020. During her airline career, she met her dear friend Mary Mullany, with whom she walked all the major European capitals whenever they stopped over, and who supported her through cancer treatment in Richmond, VA. With her second husband, Fred Berry, an ichthyologist, she traveled extensively in Latin America and the Caribbean as he followed his passion for his work with fish, as well as his other interest in Heliconia systematics. (Patty has a well-earned dedication in the front of his landmark book on those quintessentially tropical plants.) She had many stories of those adventures. Together they formed a joint passion for Mayan studies after a chance visit to Yucatan in the 1970s. They visited every possible Mayan site in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, usually in a rented VW Beetle – many more adventures! It was through these trips that Patty formed a love of old Merida, since that was then the gateway to the Mundo Maya.
After Fred passed away, she determined that she would spend the rest of her life here, and brought her German shorthair Katy with her. Together they remodeled her home on the corner of Calles 74 and 65. Commiserating over remodeling trials, she befriended Rebecca Paul, whose own travel adventures kept Patty going to the very end. Katy passed, and Max the Wonder Dog (the friendliest golden retriever ever) took over Patty’s heart. Despite characterizing herself as an introvert, Patty made many friends and loved to go out – to concerts, to the Symphony, to join friends for drinks and food, and of course, before cancer slowed her down, to all her cherished Mayan ruins – Uxmal, Palenque and Labna, among others. She belonged to the International Women’s Club and the Merida English Library, and always took great interest in what was going on, even though towards the end her physical participation waned.
After Max, too, crossed the rainbow bridge, her close friend and caregiver, Lesley Beare-Saunders, persuaded her that she should take in Lucy, a little rescue poodle mix from a beach in Belize. One of the last things that Patty really enjoyed was a visit by Lucy to her hospital bed that Lesley arranged. Having survived cancer and long Covid, her unexpected death from sepsis after what everyone thought would be a routine operation came as a shock. Patty still had plans!
Patty is especially missed by Mary, Rebecca and Lesley as well as the many women whom she befriended and mentored over a lifetime.