Patricia M. Jeremiah died in her sleep in her home in Edgecomb on March 16, 2023.

Pat was born Sept. 6, 1941 and grew up in Concord, Massachusetts, the daughter of William Graydon Smith and Harriet Patricia Hand. She was the eldest of four children and big sister to brothers Michael, David and Jonathan. She attended Concord Academy, studied dance, played field hockey and loved books. She relished her summers spent in Lyme, Connecticut with her grandparents Blink and Hulda Hand, aka “Big Bam.” She inherited her love of all things gardening and her tremendous green thumb from her beloved Bam. In her teen years, Pat was a camp counselor at the John. C. Cambell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, where she got to develop and share her creativity, her kindness, and her love of music, arts and nature. She absolutely cherished her time in Brasstown and spoke of it often. She studied Recreation and City Planning at the University of Kentucky and graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1962. She then moved to New York City and worked at Harcourt, Brace Publishing in the Children’s Books Division under Ms. Margaret McElderry, her mentor and boss. This was a formative chapter in her lifelong love affair with books.

It was in New York City that she met Robert Jeremiah, on a blind date encouraged by a mutual friend. “I knew it was all over for me by the time we got to the elevator.” They were married on Nov. 20, 1965 and were married for 47 years until Bob’s death in 2013.

Bob and Pat relocated from New York to San Francisco in 1966 and started their family there. They settled in Mill Valley, California and Pat was a stay at home mom early on. When the kids were school age, she got a job as a classroom aid, simultaneously immersing herself and contributing to the life and energy of a school and on the same calendar schedule as her children, who were always her priority. She was elected to serve on the Strawberry Recreation Board and was a dedicated parent leader on the neighborhood swim team. All the while, she was getting her very own gardens up and blooming at home on Richardson Drive. She knew everyone in the neighborhood, had a lot of friends, and though she missed the East Coast, loved her life there.

In 1979, Bob’s job took them back East and they settled in Westport, Connecticut. The Coleytown Junior High School Library welcomed her as an assistant librarian, she started her own very successful gardening design and landscaping business, Perennial Pleasures, and was a fixture at all her kids’ school activities.

After designing and overseeing the construction of their home on High Head in Edgecomb, Bob and Pat retired to Maine in the late 1990s. The land in Edgecomb had been in the family since the early 1970s and the family had been coming to the Boothbay region annually for decades. Theregion was a home away from home, with lots of extended family nearby. Bob and Pat’s place on High Head became a hub for family and friends from all over: their children, grandchildren (how they loved their Bammie!), siblings, cousins, friends, friends of friends, strangers sent by friends: all were welcome. The grill was fired up, the music was playing, and the gardens around the house were waiting to be explored.

Pat got involved in her new home town right away. She was elected to the Edgecomb Planning Board and served faithfully with wisdom and vision for years. But it was at the newly forming Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay where everything came together for Pat: at CMBG she had found her mission, her soul food, her kindred spirits. As a volunteer, visionary and voice almost from day one, Pat got to be a part of creating something wonderful from scratch and to give life to her passion for plants and books. She loved that place and all the people there and she poured all her love and energy into it. She was welcomed in kind; she had found her people. She was Miss Rumphius incarnate. In tandem with the love and satisfaction she derived from her family, her involvement at CMBG was the joy of her life.

As much as Pat was an energizer bunny and a woman of the people, she also had a very solitary side. She very much enjoyed her own company, the company of her garden and of her books. After Bob passed, she could go days without speaking to anyone and be as happy as you please: pulling weeds and planting, doing her crossword puzzles, perusing her plant catalogs, getting lost in her murder mysteries and historical romance novels, doodling on her sketch paper with her colored pencils and bingeing on her daydreams. She had big plans and big ideas and truly enjoyed the thrill of creativity.

When Pat would get word of someone struggling with a health issue, or hear about a big event coming up, she would light a candle and write a little note with words of encouragement and positivity: “Peace, Strength, Swift recovery, Keep the spirits up.” Or “Go! Safe Journey! Behave Yourself!” or simply “Blessed Be”. Please light a candle for Pat and drink a toast to her with a cup of Scottish Breakfast tea and enjoy a sleeve of Oreos! She was a lovely woman, a force a nature, a great mom, a candle burning for all of us. We will miss her so much. Blessed Be.

Please join family and friends in celebrating Pat Jeremiah’s life on Sunday, July 2 at 10:30 a.m. at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, 132 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay, Maine, at the Labyrinth in the Children’s Garden. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorial gifts be made to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, mainegardens.org, 132 Botanical Gardens Drive, Boothbay, ME 04537 or the Lincoln County Animal Shelter, 27 Atlantic Highway, Edgecomb, ME 04556.

Hall’s of Boothbay has care of the arrangements. To extend online condolences, light a candle or to share a story or picture, please visit Patricia’s Book of Memories at www.hallfuneralhomes.com