Local senior earns award for lifetime of community service
GILROY
Patricia Marlowe, or “Pat” as she’s known, never expected an award, not even after six decades of service to her favorite town, state and country.
But the Exchange Club of Gilroy felt like it was time to recognize Marlowe for personifying the organization’s three areas of focus: youth, Americanism and community. After all, friends and family said she devoted her career to the Gilroy Unified School District and raised two U.S. Army soldiers, Jack and Jimmy, and a sailor in the U.S. Navy, Jay.
Now she is serving out her 12th and perhaps final year as the San Jose chapter president of the American Gold Star Mothers Organization. It is a group of women who have lost sons in U.S. wars and raises funds for veterans’ causes and care. Jack W. Marlowe was killed April 4, 1968, south of Saigon in then South Vietnam.
“She’s an unsung hero,” said Sandra Marlowe, Pat’s daughter-in-law and Jimmy’s wife.
Though Sandra and Pat Marlowe’s caretaker, Kalatiola Tukuafu, help Pat bake pies and get around the house, “she’s still sharp as a pistol,” Sandra Marlowe said.
This became apparent in Pat’s spotless living room, where a Tweedy-Bird balloon had settled in the corner, left over from Pat’s Nov. 3 birthday. She and daughter-in-law went to Chukchansi casinos in Coarsegold that day because Pat, who has cancer, said she felt an unusual burst of energy that day. At least enough to win $280 on the slot machines.
As she perched on an old, cushy couch in her pleated gray suit and frilly peach blouse, though, Pat summoned enough energy to recall her generation and offer her thoughts on the current one fighting half-way across the world.
“I wish all the boys would come home by Christmas,” Pat said of the 170,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Beside her on the wall hung a pyramid of eight portraits, each depicting a man in uniform from Pat’s family.
“The president should see that they need to come home. We can’t save the world. People here in California need help.”
One thing that does not need help, though, is Pat’s garden.
“Everybody wants to see my orchids,” Pat said. As she sat on the plastic patio furniture in her back yard, the late-morning sun warmed her swollen feet. “Look at them,” she said, rubbing her stockinged ankles that have supported her for 83 years.
She spent most of that time with her husband, Jim, who died in 1996 after serving on the USS Altamahar in the Indian Ocean during World War II. After the war, Jim’s job with Southern Pacific Railroad helped the Watsonville high school sweethearts visit all 50 states, Pat said, although she was not allowed to drive her 27-foot camper through Manhattan.
When she was not traveling, Pat, who was born in Aromas, worked for the Gilroy Unified School District.
“Here in Gilroy then, it was a good place to raise a family,” Pat said. “Then,” she emphasized with a slight chuckle.
Back then was the early 1960s, when Councilman Dion Bracco was turning 5 years old and Pat was enrolling him in Kindergarten at the old Rucker School.
Earlier this month, Bracco showed up at Pat’s door in northwest Gilroy with Exchange Board Member Shirley Willard to give her the plaque. Although it has been more than 40 years, Pat said she still remembered the time she thought little Bracco was going to die.
“One day he drank some of that clay water, and the teacher brought him into my office, and we had him, what do you call it? Up-chuck? Yeah, we had him chuck it all up,” Pat said, taking a sip of water with Tukuafu’s help. “We thought he was going to die, but I didn’t tell him that, of course.”
Nobody told Pat she was getting an award either, and she said it was the first time she has ever received recognition, much like the forgotten Gold Star monument in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Years ago Pat and other mothers cleaned up the weed-covered memorial after a local gardener found it.
Now Gilroy has finally found its own living monument in Pat, who said she just wants one thing for Christmas.
“I just want my family. I wish I can be here for Christmas, but if God decided he wants to take me …” Pat said as she lay on the couch in her ironed gray suit.
