Patricia Ann Mears

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Category: Obituaries

Created on Friday, 25 July 2014 12:16

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 A memorial service for Patricia Ann Mears, a Sitka resident since 1969, will be held 2:30 p.m. Saturday, July 26, at the Pioneers Home Chapel.
Pat died July 19, at the age of 84.
She was born April 7, 1930, in Potsdam, N.Y., to Francis (LaDuke) Lincoln and Burton Oliver Lincoln.
She was raised in the French Catholic traditions of the region of New York just south of Quebec. When she was a teenager, her father, a master paper maker, moved to Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y., to become superintendent of the Cornwall Paper Mill.  It was there that she met her future husband, Roland Robert Mears Jr., who was finishing his duty in the U.S. Air Force at Steward Air Force Base after his service in the Korean War.
Ron had already made up his mind to join his mother and father in Ketchikan, where they would restart their logging business in the great forests of Southeast Alaska.
After marrying and having their first child together in New York, Ron went ahead to Ketchikan in 1955, and Pat flew to Seattle to meet him, for a “honeymoon” cruise on the SS Prince Rupert to their first home in Ketchikan.
Pat spent her first few months living in a World War II-vintage LCM-8 converted landing craft, with her husband Ron, their son Ronnie, her son Jeff, and Ron Sr. and his wife Hazel.
Things were fairly primitive in that boat, moored in Thomas Basin. There was a bunk room with four bunks, a living room that could sleep two more and a kitchen built into the engine room enclosure, with the table built directly over the engine. It had been procured by Ron Sr. for the purposes of being the base for a logging camp.
The Mears family had migrated from Mercer, Wisconsin, with a number of other families, to continue the logging traditions of the Swedish immigrants who had settled first in Wisconsin then moved to the last great frontier of Alaska.
 After a short time on the water at Thomas Basin, Ron and Pat moved into an apartment on Tongass Street for a year or so, after which the family moved to Hemlock Street behind Wingrens supermarket, where Ron had become a master butcher.
The family grew again with Debbie’s birth in October 1956, followed by Cheryl in August 1958 and then Greg in September of 1960. 
In January 1961, the family returned to New York, where Tim became the youngest child in 1962. After a brief time, the tug of the great north pulled the family back to Ketchikan in 1968, and a year later to Sitka, where Pat lived the rest of her life. 
Pat retired from the Sitka Pioneers Home, where she worked in the Environmental Services Department.
She had an affinity for shopping, her pets, cooking, watching movies, and her family. She had a great dry sense of humor and laughed often.
Pat will lovingly be remembered by family and friends as giving a whole new meaning to the phrase “Hard-Headed Woman.”
She was preceded in death by her parents, brother Burton Oliver Lincoln Jr., and sister Virginia Francis Tams.
She is survived by sisters Eleanor Ann Leoce of Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Joanne Mary Sieja, Jonestown, Pa.;  sons Jeffrey Lincoln of Washington and  his children, Marcie (Lincoln) Sigvartson and Stephen Patrick Lincoln; Ron Mears, Sitka, and children Cherie Mears and Jason Mears; Greg Mears of Anchorage, wife Kathy and daughter Kelsea; and Tim Mears, Sitka, wife Tammy, children James Mears and Michael Mears; daughters Debbie (Mears) Stilson of Sitka, husband Wally, children Deborah (McDaniel) Mauldin of Colorado, Russell Stilson of Nevada, Patty McDaniel of Sitka and Maria Stilson Sitka; and Cheryl (Mears) Karasch of Juneau, husband Jody, and children Todd Mears of Anchorage and Jason Karasch, Wasilla.
Many great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews also survive.
“The family would like to send out our deepest heartfelt thanks to the community of Sitka for being a wonderful part of our Mom’s life,” the family said.

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