Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Pat moved to Ogden, Utah, when military service took her father, David Winsor, to Hill Air Force Base. She graduated from Ogden High School and then over the next few decades, attended Weber State, the University of Utah, and Westminster College, pursuing everything from business management to psychology. Her greatest regret is that this academic wanderlust kept her from the specialization that would have secured a college degree.

While her two children were young, Pat devoted herself to an extensive list of volunteer duties. As a longtime member of the Junior League of Ogden, she organized rummage sales and tested the League’s cookbook recipes on her children. As League president, she helped create the Weber County Guardian Ad Litem program that trained members to advocate for abused and neglected children in court, as well as the Family Support Program of Ogden.

Ever the long-range planner, in 1982, Pat somehow lured the futurist Robert Theobald to talk to the Junior League. The night he came to our house for dinner, the power went out. We sat in the dark for three hours, eating by candlelight, listening to the famous economist foretell the future. Pat often recalled that magical night, convinced that the energy in the universe had shifted when the lights came back on.

The universe held deep fascination for Pat. She loved to photograph the moon, and adored Carl Sagan and his PBS “Cosmos” series. Her admiration for the astronomer would be one of the last memories to slip away from her, along those of her supersonic flight on the Concorde.

After years of giving away her tremendous organizational skills for free, Pat took a job at the Ogden Chamber of Commerce, eventually becoming a vice president. Later, she served as executive director of Executive Women International, where she soon realized the minutiae of nonprofit management was a poor fit for someone always planning 50 years into the future. She joined Transition Management International, and later Right Management, where she was ahead of the curve in turning her passion for teaching into work as a career coach.

She often used personality assessments on her clients–tested first on her family, all now fully schooled in their Myers-Briggs profiles. She won many awards for her work. Her only unhappy client, it seemed, was her husband, Skip, who resisted all her advice on “transitioning” to retirement.

In 1989, Pat and Skip moved from Ogden to Park City and bought a hot air balloon, christened Wild Thing. Pat never stopped talking about her balloon flights over fields of French sunflowers or a castle in Luxembourg. She became a committed Francophile, aspiring to be called “Grand-mere.” Instead, thanks to her first grandson, she would be forever known to her family as Kuku.

Pat never missed Ballet West’s Nutcracker and served on the board of the Ogden Symphony Ballet Association. She once conducted the Utah Symphony at Deer Valley, where Mitt Romney witnessed perhaps her most cherished life experience. During visits to her daughter in Washington DC, Pat would spend hours at the National Gallery, soaking in art by her beloved Mark Rothko. Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels and the Spiral Jetty in Great Salt Lake were both obsessions that would stick in her brain long after many other mere mortals were forgotten.

Neither of Pat’s children managed to inherit her natural gift for fashion, though it seems to have resurfaced in her only granddaughter. Stylish to the end, she was often mistaken for a visitor, rather than a resident, in memory care. When Pat moved to Legacy Village in Sugarhouse in 2023, she was soon dancing, high kicking and singing along with musical performances by one of her favorite staffers. She loved all her friends there and never failed to smile and say hello to the people who cared for her. Her family is eternally grateful for all their important work.

Pat is survived by Edward Mencimer, her husband of almost 60 years, daughters Stephanie Mencimer and Michelle Mazzie, sons-in-law Paul Mazzie and Erik Wemple, and grandchildren Zachary Mazzie, Samuel and Lucinda Mencimer.

A celebration of life will be held Feb. 22 at Legacy Village Sugarhouse, 1212 E. Wilmington Ave, Salt Lake City, UT, from 3 pm to 5 pm. In lieu of flowers, donations in Pat’s memory may be made to Ballet West or the Body Donation Program at the University of Utah medical school, where Pat will continue teaching even from the afterlife.