In Memory

Patti Deight (Griffin)

Patti Deight (Griffin)

2017

From Patty's Obituary:

Patricia Linda Deight-Griffin ObituaryJuly 10, 1951 - January 16, 2017 We lost our strong, loving, brave, incredibly cheerful and giving, beautiful Patricia (Pat) Deight-Griffin, suddenly and unexpectedly on January 16th 2017 due to heart complications. We lost Pat at such an early age.........she had so much life in her; towards her family, doggies, skiing and everything....

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/latimes/obituary.aspx?n=patricia-linda-deight-griffin&pid=184103803



 
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12/16/18 04:50 AM #1    

Howard Higgins

I first met Patty in 10th grade, in our English class.   She was so very nice, and took an interest in my terrible poetry.

She was one of the prettiest girls in school, and it was so nice to see her beaming smile every morning.

Rest in peace Patty.


12/27/18 10:30 AM #2    

Janet Helm

Patty and I were close friends especially in Junior High School. She was extremely intelligent, and a talented writer and piano player. She was naturally beautiful and was sought after by male admirers. She was a private person and had high standards. I wish we had stayed in touch. I wish all the best to her family. 


01/12/19 08:40 PM #3    

Terry McClintick

I also remember Patti. Definitely a very pretty girl R.I.P. young lady!

10/02/19 05:33 PM #4    

Steve Light

 

When I first came on this site I knew that there would be those among us who were now departed.  I had learned of Sandy Spiegel’s passing not too long after it happened, now more than some years ago.  But I was not prepared to see how many of our classmates were no longer with us.  But, then, given our age now and the actuarial tables, ten percent is not at all out of the ordinary.  Of course, it is no solace at all to know that this is the norm but there is nothing for it, alas….

Naturally, I did look forward to seeing what had become of those with whom I had lost touch and of all the other members of our class whether I knew them or not.   I have been enormously touched and moved by reading about classmates I knew, barely knew, knew of, or didn’t know at all. And I have been enormously touched and moved to read the remembrances of various classmates.  Indeed, I have teared up at times. Among a number of others I especially looked forward to seeing what had become of Patti Deight whom I knew at Demille and at Millikan but with whom I lost touch after graduation.  So I was all the more unprepared to see that, alas and alas, she was also among the departed.

Patti and I were in the same English classes together in both 8th and 9th grade at Demille and then in Journalism class at Millikan in 10th grade.  She and I had certain things in common.  We were both born in New York City and her family had come out to Southern California in 1955 while my family came out to Southern California in the latter part of the summer in 1957. And her mother and my mother were good friends and her parents and my parents socialized together from time to time.

Patti was a very sweet, a very kind, and a very talented person.  She was a good person. And as we all know, being a good person, yes, a good person, an ethical and ethico-existential good person is, ever and always, the most important of all things, the best of all things. 

Of course, Patti was also a great beauty.   And she had blossomed early. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, one could say by analogy that she was the Ava Gardner (to Michele Sheahan’s Lana Turner) among the great beauties of our junior high and senior high school days, or to bring the analogy but half a generation as opposed to a full generation removed from our’s, she could have played Sophia Loren (or Gina Lollabrigida) to Michele’s Julie Christie. 

Patti turned heads, no doubt.  Beauty is always a letter of recommendation which cannot be ignored.  Yet, beauty is but the random outcome of the genetic dice.  However, we are all born with the capacities of kindness, empathy, and generosity, the capacity to be a good and kind person.  But, alas, not everyone employs the aforementioned capacities. And it is one of the primary causes of all the banes of human history.

Patti employed these capacities in the very best of ways.  My father was the sweetest, kindest, and most generous person I’ve ever known.  So at an early age I knew a thing or two about very kind and generous people.  And Patti was precisely that, so very kind, so very empathetic, so very generous.

In 8th grade my parents separated.  They got back together but the separation covered most of the school year.  It was upsetting and unsettling for my brother and me, but also for my parents. 

Patti learned about all this from her mother and so she became very solicitous of my well being.  She would ask how I was doing and tell me she would be happy to help in any way that she could.  Throughout that year she showed me kindness and support.  She was good to me, she helped me, she encouraged me.  She saw me through that difficult time, that difficult year. 

Yes, I could always see in her eyes her genuine and sweet concern.  Even as a very young girl, she had a special kind of ethical wisdom.  She knew how to truly help another person.  She truly helped me.  And her kindness and care never abated, continuing on in 9th and 10th grade.  She would from time to time ask me how things were with my parents, how things were with my younger brother, and so on and so forth.   Her friendship was always comforting and I was deeply grateful to her, then and to this day.

What is more, when my brother and I were growing up we learned early on that my mother had read Tolstoy’s War and Peace from start to finish of its more than 1000 pages when she was 13.  My brother and I were very proud of her for this.

And I vowed I would do the same when I was thirteen.  And so in 8th grade I took the book down off the book shelves at home and set to reading it.  Sometimes I would bring it to school.  Patti asked me about it and I told her about my mother and my aim to do the same.  She was impressed. She smiled that absolutely lovely smile of her’s.  I could see she admired me for this.   Quite naturally, this pleased me.  When I told her I had finished the book, she smiled so sweetly and she embraced me. And, then, a week or so later, after class she handed me a package, gift wrapped.  Inside was a copy of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and she had written a very lovely inscription.  If, as I said, she smiled so sweetly, you can well imagine how I smiled at that moment.  Does love make the world go round? Certainly. But smiles do too!

I lost touch with her after high school.  But I always wondered about her over the years and always hoped that great fortune and happiness were her constant companions.  I see now, happily, that she got a degree in journalism at CSULB and that subsequently she became a very successful lawyer.

That Patti suffered the tragedy of the loss of her husband not too many years into their marriage and other misfortunes grieves me and will always grieve me.  But that she persevered and that her kindness and care were always at the center of her being, of her actions, is the light, the spotlight, in which she will always appear, a beautiful, kind, and loving person, someone to emulate, someone to admire, someone whom I will always hold in grateful and loving affection.


10/03/19 10:29 AM #5    

Karen Keech (Swerling)

Such a sweet remembrance, Steve Light.  I remember sitting across from her in elementary school (Cubberley) and watching her sub-consciously play with her beautiful long curly lack hair.  How I wished I had beautiful hair like that.  Patty and Amanda were my inspirations for growing my hair long.  I wish I had told her how pretty she was.  I think I’ve told Amanda how much she influenced me.  Obviously, life is short. I still have long hair thanks to Patty and Amanda Brown, the prettiest girls in the class. (Anita Eddy was beautiful, too, but she had lovely short hair.) 


10/03/19 02:09 PM #6    

Bob Vanderheiden

Did I know Patti? I can't recall, although if she and Steve Light were in the same 10th-grade English and SS classes, I should have known here. Steve, you make me wish to God On High I had known Patti, had even known someone like her. May the spirits be kind to you, Patti.


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