‘Tough little cookie.’ Tri-Cities community theater volunteer remembered after early COVID death

Homer and Patricia Stevens would have celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary last fall.

Instead, they spent some of their last hours together lying in side-by-side hospital beds, holding hands across the table between them.

Patricia Stevens died April 1 at the age of 91 from complications of COVID-19.

The day before her death just five Tri-Cities area people had been confirmed by public health officials as victims of the disease. But the death toll would quickly start to climb though the spring toward the current total of 292 local lives lost to COVID.

Her husband, Homer, now age 95, survived to leave the hospital without her.

They met during World War II.

He was stationed at Camp Roberts and attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in nearby San Luis Obispo, Calif.

During a church meeting, a deep male voice blessing the sacrament caught Patricia’s attention, and she knew she needed to meet the serviceman.

She waited for him as he was sent overseas to France. He didn’t tell her he was on the front lines, not wanting her to worry as they wrote letters back and forth, but she was anxiously checking the names of soldiers killed in battle for the year and a half he was gone.

They married just a week after she turned 17.

“She was a tough little cookie,” said her daughter Kerrie Yeafoli, of Anchorage, Alaska.

Patricia’s parents divorced when she was 3 and she spent much of her childhood moving from one relative’s home to another.

When she married, she had not graduated from high school.

Not a traditional homemaker

“She was a homemaker, but I don’t remember her being the traditional homemaker,” Yeafoli said. “She was very much invested in her education and furthering her knowledge of the world around her.”

When Yeafoli was struggling with her education in junior high, she remembers her mother telling her “I am so jealous of you getting to go to school and learn these things.”

After her five children were born, she got first her high school diploma and then spent years taking classes through Brigham Young University to earn her bachelor’s degree in education with a minor in drama.

She never used her diploma to get a job as a teacher, but volunteered to teach English to Spanish speakers in the Tri-Cities.

“There wasn’t any subject she didn’t want to know,” Yeafoli said. “She sought after knowledge.”

She learned to speak Spanish in her 50s as she and Homer went on missions for their church, including to Mexico and Guatemala, said her daughter LaRae Claybrook of Kennewick.

She may be best known in the Tri-Cities for her love of community and musical theater.

“I think she was just a frustrated movie star,” Yeafoli joked.

Claybrook said her love of theater and an ability to talk to anyone may have been the result of her childhood, moving from relative to relative and learning to adapt her personality.

Patricia acted, sang and directed productions for the Richland Players and the Richland Light Opera Co. and co-founded the Young at Heart Theater group for performers over 50.

She often sewed theatrical costumes and for a time worked for Red Door Party Rentals in Kennewick, making costumes that included a volcano that erupted.

“The woman could sew anything,” Yeafoli said. That included handcrafting wedding gowns.

The couple moved to the Tri-Cities area in the 60s when Homer was transferred to what was then El Paso Natural Gas in Plymouth. They would move away briefly and then return in the 70s.

She came to love the Tri-Cities sunsets and would often sit on the back porch in the evenings watching the sun go down, Yeafoli said.

Fell ill in March 2020

She fell ill in mid March 2020, before there was a known case of COVID-19 in the Tri-Cities.

She was sleeping a lot and not eating, said Claybrook, a nurse.

Her family took her to a Tri-Cities hospital where she was tested for the coronavirus, but was sent home after an overnight stay because she didn’t seem that ill.

At home the coronavirus quickly spread to her husband.

They were living in a senior living complex apartment, and staff there could not enter to protect workers from being infected.

A granddaughter, who was also a nurse, took care of them briefly until they became so ill they were admitted to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland.

The staff and doctors there “were amazing,” Claybrook said.

Claybrook thought if one of her parents would survive, it would be her mother. Her father had a history of heart issues and relied on a pacemaker. Both had do not resuscitate orders, so ventilators were not considered.

When Patricia died, a nurse woke Homer up just long enough to tell him, the family said.

He was released from the hospital to a rehabilitation center and then a senior living center. But he was miserable without Patricia and family visits were limited to talking through a window, Claybrook said.

The daughter eventually moved him into her family’s home.

One of the family’s regrets is not being allowed a traditional service for Patricia, due to restrictions on gatherings and on travel for out-of-town family members.

No funeral service

The family was told they could drive to a Tri-Cities cemetery, park a distance away and watch her burial.

Yeafoli could not travel from Alaska but her daughter in Seattle drove to the Tri-Cities and held up a cellphone to allow Yeafoli to watch.

“Instead of having flowers and songs and wonderful stories and family around you, I had to watch my mother be buried on Skype by three guys in overalls with a backhoe,” Yeafoli said. “It was horrible.”

Not allowing the family unity and the support from friends at a service affects the recovery of a family, she said.

“It’s just ‘oh well, they’re gone.’ That’s all you get with COVID,” she said.

A younger brother of Patricia and a brother-in-law of Homer also have died from COVID.

“It’s three funerals for people we knew and loved and grew up with, and we just got nothing,” Yeafoli said.

Nearly a year after Patricia died, Homer continues to miss her deeply.

But the family continues to grow.

A second great-great-grandchild has been born. Baby blankets that she started for the fourth and fifth generations of her family before her death are being finished and passed along.

Patricia Stevens is survived by her husband; sons Ron, Roger and Gary; two daughters; 25 grandchildren; more than 60 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

This story was originally published March 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM.