Our 60’s Hippie Casts Her Vote.

Posted on | October 31, 2024 | 4 Comments

Pat Magee Jaksha

Mike Magee

This is my sister, Pat, #3 (I was #4) of 12 children born to Grace and Bill Magee. She was born on Elvis Presley’s birthday – 1 year and 12 days before I was born. That was 14 months after our father had returned from Europe at the close of WW II. He was a soldier and a healer, a happy warrior, an optimistic fighter, a good person who earned the respect of many.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Their 3rd child, Pat, is also a soldier and a healer, a happy warrior, an optimistic fighter, a good person who has earned the respect of many. She also shares with her late father an easy manner, a quick and infectious laugh, a clever wit, and a strong moral backbone. She displays and lives her values, but not in a pushy or insufferable way.

Pat can take a hit, and still be standing. Here she is above, decked out for Halloween in the 1960’s Hippie costume her daughter, Mandy, helped her pick out for Halloween festivities at “Sunrise of Edgewater” where she now lives.

The past few years have been a test of Pat’s strength, and spirit, and resilience. She lost her beloved husband of 52 years, Dave, on  November 25, 2022,  to Covid related complications. With a range of medical issues of her own, she moved within weeks from her life long home in Tucson, Arizona, where she had been an elementary school teacher, to New York City to be close to her only daughter and husband, Mike, and only granddaughter, Marlowe.

Two complex surgeries, and challenging recoveries followed, and multiple city moves before settling into her new home in Edgewater, NJ, a stone’s throw from where we grew up and our father practiced medicine in an office attached to the house in Fort Lee. She wasn’t alone. Besides frequent visits from her younger sisters, Sue and Kathy, who lived in the area, she had many new friends in-residence, some even who had been patients of our father as children many years ago.

As kids, when we would get down, our Mom and Dad would tell us to “Keep the Faith.” That meant to look forward, not backwards; to not waste time feeling sorry for ourselves; to be strong and above all, not give up. Pat has done all that – and a little more, a secret sauce that lights up her eyes. When she was in pain, or struggling to stand independently, those eyes that are striking mirrored determination. But as you see reflected in the picture above, they now sparkle with  joyfulness and thankfulness.

Pat is alive and standing on her own again. Like many Americans, she has faced challenges, some large enough to justify just giving up, and no one would have blamed her for that.  But she never did. When I spoke to her about this picture yesterday, she had one regret. She said she meant to wear her “I voted” sticker when our sister Sue took the shot. She voted by mail in her new (and our old) state of New Jersey. Keep the Faith!

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