MOUNT VERNON – Patricia Ann Rawson, a devoted teacher, long-time volunteer EMT and beloved member of her community, died peacefully on June 16, 2023, surrounded by family. She was 77.

Pat or “Patty” was born on March 27, 1946, at St. Mary’s Hospital in Troy, N.Y., the first daughter of the late Thomas and Eleanor (Mahoney) Lonabocker. She grew up in Pittsfield, Mass. and attended St. Joseph Central High School. Pat attended Boston University from 1963-1966, where she met her future husband, Davis Stanley Rawson, Jr. She finished her degree at the University of Maine at Orono in 1969 and later earned her master’s degree in literacy with a focus on wilderness survival at Orono in 1998.

Pat began her career teaching health and physical education in Hermon. After spending time at home raising her two daughters, she went back to teaching, first at Wayne Elementary and then Maranacook Community School as a literacy specialist. Over her 30 years of teaching, she served as a mentor and adviser to hundreds of students, inspiring many to share her love of reading.

Coaching girls was also an important part of Pat’s identity. She coached many sports teams over the years, including girls basketball early in her teaching career, and both her daughters’ Mount Vernon Elementary softball team. Pat also served as a field hockey referee until her daughters entered middle school, and then coached high school field hockey at Maranacook after they left for college.

Shortly after moving to Mount Vernon in the late 1970s, Pat became a volunteer Emergency Medical Technician and helped start Mount Vernon Rescue. What began as a small group of part-time first responders grew into a respected and essential service for Mount Vernon and the surrounding community. As an EMT, Pat saved countless lives, dropping everything as soon as an emergency call came in over the radio. She cajoled many friends and neighbors to become certified and join Rescue, and she served as director from 1981 until she retired in May 2023.

Pat was an advocate and champion for the causes she believed in. With her Rescue colleagues, she started the annual “Giving Tree” tradition for Mount Vernon and Vienna in 1990. Every December, she spent weeks soliciting and organizing gift donations to families in need, and then rode around on a fire truck with Santa Claus delivering bags of presents. The tradition also involved dropping off “cheerful gifts” to older residents in town.

The annual Rescue Garage Sale was another community-wide gathering that Pat started and led for more than 20 years. The garage sale raised thousands of dollars to support the work of Mount Vernon Rescue. In addition to her deep dedication to and advocacy for her Rescue volunteers, she served on multiple town committees: Neighbors Driving Neighbors, Aging in Place, Community Partnerships, the Mount Vernon Community Center and the Travis Mills Foundation.

Her favorite time of year was the annual “Camp Gramma” visit from her three granddaughters. Pat would take the girls kayaking, swimming, fishing, to visit Daphne Sanders’ Corner Shop Antiques, and to the “camper store” to “shop” for mobile homes. They organized lemonade and muffin stands together in the driveway. “Camp Gramma” meant ice cream every day, wearing pajamas until lunchtime and roasting s’mores after dinner.

Pat always had a project (or three) going at any one time. She enjoyed sewing, quilting, caning chairs, basket making and crocheting with her friends. In the early years, she made clothing for her daughters, custom baskets for her family and crocheted hats and scarves for her granddaughters. She spent hours in the summer in either her vegetable garden or in the many flower gardens on her property. She received her gun safety certificate and took great pleasure in shooting the squirrels that attacked her bird feeders with her father-in-law’s antique .22 rifle – and then joyfully sending pictures of her kills to her family.

Canning and baking were her favorite hobbies. When they were young, Pat’s daughters remember her baking bread and forming decorative pats of butter. She also made countless batches of jams and jellies – a tradition that expanded to pickles, pasta sauce, dilly beans, salsa, peach melba and garlic jelly, a family favorite. Pat was not a fan of spicy foods but still made the red pepper jelly her daughters and their friends loved (without taste-testing the batches). In her later years, she would tap trees for maple syrup and spend hours boiling sap in the woodshed.

Pat was an avid reader of fiction. Her teaching philosophy was that her students read whatever they enjoyed – she was a proponent of graphic novels – and she kept several different lists of all the books she read. After she retired, she volunteered at both the Mount Vernon Elementary school library and the Dr. Shaw Memorial Library and loved recommending books to library card holders, students, and her friends and family.

She adopted many cats and dogs over the years, and she leaves behind her beloved cat, Meow Meow. She raised guinea hens to protect her rose bushes from Japanese beetles, and when they proved too dim-witted for that task, she raised broods of chickens (but never roosters) in her backyard. Among Pat’s favorite chickens (which her granddaughters helped name) were Leafy, Hermione, Dots, Matilda, Batman, Hamilton and Dr. Fauci.

Pat faced challenges and hardship with a smile and the loving support of her many friends. She twice broke her back – once falling off the house roof while shoveling snow, and another time in a car accident on her way to a Rescue call. Only with the support of her friends and family was she able to recuperate at home. She loved deeply and was loved back fiercely.

She leaves behind two daughters, Kate Rawson Powell of Baltimore, Md. (David) and Sarah Rawson Cutter of Henniker, N.H. (Johnny); three beloved granddaughters, Julia, Anna and Cadence; her brother, Tommy Lonabocker (Lynn) of Medfield, Mass. and her sister, Marilyn Lonabocker of Pittsfield, Mass.; her nephew, Brian Lonabocker (Eva Strobl) and niece, Casey Lonabocker (David Schiemer); and all her Huntley relatives in Ferry Beach.

Pat was incredibly grateful for the love and support of her many friends. There are simply too many wonderful friendships to recognize and celebrate here, but the family would like to especially thank Leslie Greiner, Pat’s friend for more than 40 years who served alongside her on Rescue and was the most wonderful and loyal a friend one could be. We should all be so lucky.

A celebration of Pat Rawson’s life will take place on Saturday, Aug. 19 at 2 p.m. at the Mount Vernon Community Center at 2 North Road.

Arrangements are in the care of the Roberts Funeral Home, 62 Bowdoin St., Winthrop where condolences and memories may be shared with the family on the obituary page of the funeral home website by visiting http://www.khrfuneralhomes.com

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to

Mount Vernon Rescue

6 Belgrade Rd.,

Mount Vernon, ME 04352

Copy the Story Link

« Previous

Obituary: Norma C. Woodside

Next »

Obituary: Elizabeth "Betty" (Hayes) Carpenter