After a long and active life that ended in a sad decline of her physical and cognitive abilities, Patricia Jackson died at the Lower Cape Fear Hospice in Bolivia, N.C. on Nov. 24, 2021. She was 93.
Born Patricia Joan Roberts on May 10, 1928 in Troon, Cornwall, England, Patricia was the only child of Helen (Francis) Roberts of Canonstown and Charles Nelson Roberts of Troon. She completed her education at the local schools in Troon.
Pat met her husband, Roy Jackson, in 1952 at Lyme Regis in Dorset; she was working for a boarding kindergarten at the time. They were married at Treslothan Parish Church in the Anglican Diocese of Truro, Cornwall, in 1953. After Roy’s discharge from the military, they moved to Cheshire, where Roy worked as a chemical engineer.
In 1955, Roy took a job with DuPont, which brought them to the United States. In the following years, they lived in Parkersburg, W.V.; Wilmington, Del.; Londonderry, Northern Ireland; and then again in Wilmington. A three-year assignment in Luxembourg followed. They spent Roy’s final few working years back in Wilmington before his retirement in 1992.
In retirement, Pat kept up the wide-ranging friendships, in Cornwall and around the world, realized through her travels.
During her long life, Pat worked as a hairdresser, a goat handler, a kindergarten teacher, and a nurse. In her leisure time, she was a busy gardener, a prolific knitter, and a fine cook. Her family remembers with particular fondness her pork pies and sundry traditional Christmas cakes and puddings.
Pat was a devoted mother to her three children. She was also an accomplished amateur actress, as her son, Jonathan, put it, “playing English ladies as in My Fair Lady” in community theater groups in Wilmington, Parkersburg, and Provincetown.
Beginning around 1967, Pat spent at least part of each summer in Provincetown. She eventually owned a house on Miller Hill and attended St. Mary of the Harbor Episcopal Church, where she loved to sing hymns.
Pat was devoted to her Provincetown connections. During her long summers here, she drove for Meals on Wheels (which she also did in Wilmington); she was active in the Provincetown Art Association, the public library, the Swim for Life, and especially in CASAS — the animal care organization. She topped the list several times for collecting donations for the Swim for Life and CASAS, for which she knitted many “cat carpets” for sale.
Although she was vigorous even in her eighties, she and Roy recognized that neither the Wilmington nor the Provincetown house was suitable for elderly folk. In 2015, in search of warmer climes, they moved to Southport, N.C. to live with son Jonathan and his wife, Melanie. Pat’s mental deterioration eventually became so marked, however, that she needed close attendance and had to be placed in the dementia unit of a retirement home. Recently, a series of serious falls sapped her waning strength, and she finally gave up the long fight at Lower Cape Fear.
Pat is survived by her husband, Roy Jackson of Southport, N.C.; son Jonathan Jackson and wife Melanie of Southport; Jonathan’s daughter, Jocelyn Pagel, husband David, and their children, Adelaide and Asher, of Winston-Salem, N.C.; Jonathan’s son, Dr. Trevor Jackson of Miami, Fla.; daughter Penelope Parker and husband Peter and their son, Ross, all of Uckfield, East Sussex, U.K.; and daughter Margot Page, her husband, Peter, and Margot’s daughter, Hazel Everett, all of Provincetown.
Pat’s ashes will be scattered in her beloved Troon and in Provincetown.
Already missed, she will dwell large and long in memory.
Online condolences may be sent to the family at fulwoodfuneralservice.com.
