June 21, 1935 – December 9, 2014
Patricia Louise Krall, 79, of Seattle, died December 9, 2014 of end-stage dementia, with family at her bedside.
Pat was born June 21, 1935 at Alexander’s Maternity Home in Kelso, WA to Michael and Winnifred (Olson) Krall. In 1941 the family moved to Central Valley Road near Poulsbo to what became Krall’s Poultry Farm with over 3000 laying hens. Family members had daily chores of gathering, cleaning, candling and crating the eggs and let’s not forget milking the cows. Everyone worked hard.
Pat quickly found interests off the farm as well, being elected President of the Girls Club at North Kitsap High School and selected to go to Girls State. In her 1953 senior year high school yearbook, Pat listed her hoped-for destination as being a member of the “Globe Trotters.” Indeed a natural athlete, at 15 she won the title of best swimmer at a Wildcat Lake contest among 300 boys and girls.
For four years Pat played third base and sometimes pitcher for the Bremerton Greenjackets women’s softball team which in 1951 won the Washington State Championship and the Regional (Washington, Oregon and Idaho) Championship. The team drove for three days to Detroit, playing the next day in the Women’s National Softball Championship Tournament. Pat was named All-State third base in 1951 and was inducted into the Kitsap County Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.
In 1953 Pat enrolled in Tacoma General Hospital School of Nursing, receiving her degree in 1956. After 6 months at Swedish Hospital in Seattle she soon moved to Honolulu for two years work at Queen’s Hospital, but also earning a deep tan on Waikiki beach and beginning a lifetime of real globetrotting. She was a passenger on the first Boeing 707 flight to Hawaii.
Next, Pat relocated to San Francisco, signing on as a nurse with Matson Cruise Lines for its regular sailings to Hawaii. A few years later, she took a similar position with American President Lines, sailing to Hong Kong and ports in Japan. Pat would say about life on the cruise ships that the crew had more fun than the (often elderly) passengers. She drew the lesson--and lived it--that people should travel while they are still young.
In 1966, Pat took a job with a California blood bank traveling throughout the state. She was pictured in a San Francisco newspaper article with Mayor Joseph Alioto as he donated blood. Later she worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital in Martinez, California. But in the 1970s Pat’s globetrotting spirit won out as she headed to Saudi Arabia for five years nursing work for ARAMCO. There she also played golf in the sand (winning tournaments as usual) and made many friends as she always did throughout her life. And from there she traveled ever more widely.
In 1980 Pat returned to the Northwest and settled in Lakeland Village in Allyn, WA close to family, friends and golf. She worked at Naval Hospital Bremerton and then again for the Department of Veterans Affairs, this time in Seattle, retiring in 1997 after a career in Surgical Intensive Care nursing. Truly, Pat’s greatest love was traveling the world with family and friends—with her father to the capitals of Europe as well as the tiny Slovakian village from which the Krall family had immigrated; with one sister to Greece; with another sister to Nepal, Mexico and Sweden (the latter trip also with an aunt); to Vietnam with a nursing friend who was born there; to Australia with friends made in Saudi Arabia; and travels through India, China, Afghanistan, and many other countries. It was a lifetime of more globetrotting than she ever dared dream of while still on the farm.
Pat was a caring, kind, generous, loving, fun, adventuresome, bright, energetic, free spirit. She was a greatly admired role model for many. Her family and friends miss her immensely. She was preceded in death by her parents Mike and Winnifred Krall, brother Ronald Krall and sister JoAnn Krall Iversen, and is survived by her sister Carolyn Krall of Seattle, and by many nieces, nephews, and cousins, as well as an aunt, uncle, brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and by countless friends.
The family thanks the staff at Philanthropia Adult Family Home Seattle for their loving care of Patricia and to Providence Hospice for further assistance near the end. This summer as was her wish, she will be remembered at a Celebration of Life that her family and friends hope will be worthy of the many parties she hosted and enlivened.