Athlete, photographer, and owner of Tumbleweed, a “hippie shop” in Ridgewood, N.J., Patrice Gordon of Provincetown and Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J. died at home on March 30, 2024 after a long illness. The cause was heart failure. She was 73.
The daughter of Thomas M. and Ann Elia Guiney, Pat was born on Aug. 13, 1950 in Johnstown, Pa. Her father, a lawyer and tennis player, moved the family to Clifton, N.J., where Pat grew up. “Pat was an athlete,” said Gloria Casar, her partner of nearly 50 years. “She played softball and tennis, but her real love was bowling.”
Pat had a high backswing, “quite unusual for a woman at the time,” said Gloria. A shoulder injury led her to look for another sport. After she graduated from Clifton High School in 1968, she chose tennis.
She majored in art, specializing in photography, at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, N.J. and attended the Frank X. Brennan Tennis Academy in Mercersburg, Pa. in the summers. Brennan, who was Billie Jean King’s coach, was impressed with Pat’s tennis skills.
After Pat was certified as a U.S. Tennis Association teaching professional, Brennan offered her a job as a tennis pro in 1973. Her home club was in Hawthorne, N.J., where in 1974 she met Gloria, who with two of her friends had signed up for lessons. “One of her strengths as a teacher,” said Gloria, “was her gift of gab.” During one lesson, Gloria shouted, “Oh shit,” and Pat said, “Our lesson next time will be on court etiquette.”
Pat coached the women’s tennis team at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. In 1977, she left teaching to give real estate sales a try and worked for Schlott Realtors for seven years. It was during those years that she changed her name from Guiney, the pronunciation of which she found problematic, to Gordon.
Her dream was to own her own business, and in 1992 she had a pushcart in the Bergen Mall in Paramus, N.J. selling T-shirts, candles, and the like. After a couple of years, she opened Tumbleweed in Ridgewood. “It was like a hippie shop,” Gloria said, selling incense and jewelry in addition to the pushcart’s T-shirts and candles.
The shop did well, enabling Pat and Gloria to spend their annual summer vacation in Provincetown. Pat hoped one day to buy a house in town.
When her mother died in 2004, Pat closed the store and with her inheritance bought a house in Youngs Court. Over the next 20 years, she lived there from May through October. “She loved to walk to the end of the court to see the bay,” Gloria said, “and she enjoyed taking photographs of boats and of the sea.”
Most of all, Pat loved the community that seemed to develop organically around her in Provincetown. After all, “she was part Irish,” Gloria said, “and would talk to everybody.”
Her coffee group grew and began meeting on Friday nights at the Harbor Lounge. One night they were asked to quiet down by a man who said, “I am talking with two distinguished ladies and we can’t hear each other.” Pat’s group decided on the spot to dub themselves the Distinguished Ladies of Provincetown (DLPT).
“Pat loved Provincetown,” Gloria said. “She felt at home here.”
Pat is survived by her cousins, Mary Gramling of Great Falls, Va. and Glen Gilbert of Shawano, Wisc.; by her partner, Gloria J. Casar; by her friend Elisa M. Casar; and by many DLPTs in Provincetown.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Pat’s honor can be made to the Scottish Terrier Club of Greater New York at stcgny.com/rescue/ or by check to Richard Cerny, Treasurer, 94 Frogtown Road, Rockaway, NJ 07866.
A celebration of Pat’s life will be held in Provincetown in August.
