Obituary: Melinda Miller Patterson, 1948-2024

Melinda
Miller Patterson, 76, died peacefully on July 10, 2024, in
Montpelier, Vt., after a long battle with dementia. In her final
years, she repeatedly reassured her family that she had no regrets
and that she felt lucky to have lived such an extraordinary life.

Melinda
was born in 1948 in Lower Merion Township, Pa., the second child of
Cornwall and Janet Miller. She enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Essex,
Conn., and spent summers living aboard the family boat with her
parents and her older sister, Emily. One summer day at the mouth of
the Connecticut River, Emily pointed out a teenage boy napping on the
beach — it was John Patterson, whom Melinda would end up marrying
many years later.

Before
marriage, Melinda set off to chart her own course, buoyed by a love
of learning and a perpetually sunny spirit of optimism and goodwill.
She attended Abbot Academy and Smith College, where she took every
possible course related to Africa. After graduating she moved to
London for a fellowship at the BBC and then set off across the Sahara
on an epic overland traverse of the African continent.

Much
to the relief of her parents, Melinda eventually returned stateside
and settled in New York City, where she renovated an apartment,
worked in publishing at American Heritage and the Nation, and
took night classes toward a business degree at New York University.
She and John reunited and were married in Essex in 1981.

The
newlyweds settled in Durham, Conn., where Melinda designed a
timber-frame home at the top of a hill. The builders finished up just
before her son Timothy was born, in 1982. Luke, her second son,
arrived in 1984. Melinda was a devoted mother, and although she
always had a creative project in the works and founded two successful
small businesses when her children were small, she prioritized her
role as a parent. Even in her final years, when her capacity was
greatly diminished by dementia, she retained a remarkable ability to
befriend and connect with young children.

Melinda’s
love of travel never waned, and after becoming a mother she simply
brought her boys along for the adventure. Flipping through Melinda’s
collection of photo albums, we see her broad smile again and again —
trekking in New Zealand, riding horseback over a mountain pass in
Ecuador, bundling her little boys onto a wooden dhow off the coast of
Zanzibar, revisiting her old neighborhood of Hampstead Heath in
London and rafting the whitewater rivers of the American West.

In
1994 Melinda and John moved to Vermont, settling in Mill Village, not
far from Craftsbury Common. In Craftsbury, as was her practice
everywhere she lived, Melinda volunteered for community organizations
and welcomed a steady flow of friends, neighbors and travelers. Among
those visitors were several international exchange students, and
Melinda particularly cherished her relationships with those students
and their families.

Late
in life, as dementia began to steal away her memories, Melinda and
John returned to Connecticut and lived in a cozy house with a view of
the river, just down the street from the church where they were
married. John predeceased her in 2023, and Melinda made one last trip
to Vermont. Her final months were spent in the memory care wing of
the Gary Residence in Montpelier.

A
celebration of life service will be held on Saturday, September 28,
11 a.m., at the United Church of Craftsbury in Craftsbury Common, Vt.

This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2024.