Patricia M. Oakley (Patty), loving wife of William L. Oakley (Bill), passed away suddenly on December 9, 2024, at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center after four days in the hospital. She was surrounded by her husband and her family at the time of her death. Patty fought valiantly through multiple medical issues, beginning with cancer in 2008. Despite the challenges, she was positive, happy, and always thinking of her family and others before herself.
Patty will be deeply loved and missed by her husband of 53 years, her niece Jennifer Tode and her family, her nephew Raymond (Jeff) Jones and his family, her brother-in-law John, his wife Linda, and their daughters Abbie and Lizzie and their families. Patty was the devoted daughter of Violet and William Smith and a loving aunt who stepped in to help care for her sister’s children after Susan’s passing.
Patty was born on November 15, 1945, in South Bend, Indiana. Her father sold industrial lubrication products, which required frequent moves to be near potential customers. As a result, Patty moved multiple times, living in South Bend; Wabash, Indiana,;Marion, Indiana; and Chicago, finally settling in Indianapolis in the early 50s. She attended multiple grade schools and graduated from Broad Ripple High School in 1964. She attended Vincennes University before starting work at Purdue University in Indianapolis in 1968.
At Purdue, Patty was administrative assistant to eight computer technology professors. Her responsibilities included general secretarial work, grading student exams, and various duties in the computer lab. This is where she met Bill, her future husband and the love of her life. Bill was a computer lab assistant and spent extra time in the lab, especially when Patty was working. When she returned from a trip to Venezuela to visit her sister, the other secretaries told her that “Oakley” had been in every day asking when she would be back.
In April 1971, Patty invited several computer technology students, including Bill, to her house for a “pea vine” party, supposedly to remove pea vines from the fenceline at her parents’ home. To this day, Bill doesn’t remember actually pulling down any pea vines. When Bill arrived at the party, someone said, “Oakley’s here,” and Patty, to this day, would say that “stars went off” when he walked out the back door, and that’s when she knew. Bill says that he knew long before that.
While they had been friends since at least 1969, their first real date was in May 1971 — they attended a Neil Diamond concert — and they were married two months later, in July.
Bill’s job took him from Indianapolis to Boston in 1985, Baltimore in 1991, and back to Boston in 1996. All the while, Patty encouraged him to take the next step, whatever it was, and to reach for the stars.
In 2005, they built their dream home on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire (they purchased the lakefront lot in 1991 before going to Baltimore, but Patty always knew that they would come back to Boston) and moved there full-time when Bill retired in 2009. They sold their lake home in 2017 and moved back to Boston, eventually settling in Concord in 2019.
Patty loved to play games, especially gin and Rummikub. When not playing games, she loved to do needlepoint and work 1,000-piece puzzles, and even spent several years making pottery while in Baltimore. She was a voracious reader, collecting enough hard-copy books to fill Bill’s office until she switched to a Kindle. Her Kindle library has nearly 650 books.
The family extends heartfelt gratitude to Patty’s exceptional caregivers at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center since 2017, including Dr. Mathew Axelrod, Rheumatology; Drs. Gautam Gadey, Matthew Reynolds, Paolo Mascari, and NP Kimberly Haynsworth, Cardiology; Dr. Young-Soo Song and nurses Donna and Dawn, Nephrology; and for their outstanding and compassionate care during Patty’s final days, the entire team of the Medical Intensive Care Unit and attending physician (and coincidently Patty’s pulmonary doctor) Dr. Nicole Grossman, Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine.
A private memorial service will be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations in Patty’s name can be made to the Department of Cardiology at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center at bilh.org/giving.
Patty’s love, positivity, and selflessness will forever remain in the hearts of those who knew her.
Arrangements under the care of Concord Funeral Home, 74 Belknap Street, concordfuneral.com.
