Patricia Rae Stansky Lucas

Lucas—Patricia Rae Stansky Lucas, 87, on July 30, 2019, in Agrace Hospice Center, in Madison, Wis., peacefully, in the company of her family, after a series of falls in her assisted living center. Pat was born on February 6, 1932, in Cleveland, Ohio, to Charlotte and Raymond J. Stansky. She was a high achiever in school, but she rejected a college scholarship. Instead she married James Lucas and began her family, having three children, Norman, Karen, and Anne. A mutual friend introduced her to Sandy Huntley, and they raised their children together. Once her children were older, she decided to go to college, earning a master’s in library science at the University of Missouri. While she was there, she began attending Columbia (Mo.) Meeting, which promptly put her to work helping them to form a statement on marriage for same-sex couples. She and James divorced, and she went to Chicago and began her career as a reference librarian, working for North Suburban Library Systems and eventually ascending to head of online research at Schaumburg Public Library.

She and Sandy married under the care of North Side Meeting in Chicago, Ill., in 1989. She began attending Illinois Yearly Meeting sessions, where every third year she worked with the junior high children. She also worked on the yearly meeting’s Ministry and Advancement Committee and clerked the Maintenance and Planning Committee. Although at first she had no intention of joining a meeting, when Allie Walton (a revered and birthright Quaker) talked to her about being a Quaker and told her that “whether she joined or not, she was one,” she began the membership process, and she did not regret doing that.

She retired from library work and moved with Sandy to Chesterton, Ind., where they joined very small Duneland Meeting in Valparaiso, which became like family to her. When a single-family home became too much to manage, she and Sandy moved into a senior residence apartment in Madison, Wis., where Pat’s daughter Karen lives with her wife, Bev Cann. Pat did volunteer work in Madison (Wis.) Meeting’s library and enjoyed the early worship meeting until she began to have problems with balance and eventually confined herself to a wheelchair. Difficulties with balance and memory marked a decline in her health that necessitated a move into assisted living. She will be missed and is remembered with love.