Born Los Angeles, California on December 7, 1934, Patricia Honorine Goodwin started life in the last four years of the Great Depression. Patty, as her loved ones called her, was seven years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and her father and older brothers went off to serve the United States Navy, Coast Guard and Merchant Marines at war. Times were tough and getting tougher. So it was, Patty grew up in a household that relied on faith in our Almighty God.
As a young girl, Patty suffered from Rheumatic Fever and a few years later was hit by a car. It was her faith in God the Father and the Sacred Heart that became her sanctuary in time of illness and heartbreak. It would be her sactuary for her entire life.
As a young woman, she attended college in Pasadena and worked for stock brokerage buying and selling on Wall Street. Patty tracked the ticker tapes, reported numbers, and facilitated financial transactions. Then she met Dr. Thomas Duane Shandley, an optometric physician and WWII Army veteran. They fell in love and, after a modest courtship, married in the Catholic faith. In 1955, they welcomed Timothy to start their family, then Richard a year later and John a year after that. By the time little brother David was born in 1959, she had her hands full with four boys who never stopped squirming, like a basket full of puppies.
Years later, they would also open their home to cousins coming home to the States in between tours of combat in Vietnam. Patty took in friends her sons had grown up with, friends who had lost their own families through divorce, death, or Vietnam.
When Dr. Shandley died in 1982, the grief was unimaginable for the family, but it was devastating for Patty, as she was still a relatively young woman. It was her faith that blessed her with a quiet peace which allowed her to carry on.
In 1991, her oldest son Tim died at 41 years of age. Ten years later, in 2001, her youngest son, David died in his early forties. Again, it was her faith, devotions, and prayer life that gave her strength.
In the early 1990's Patty met her second husband, James W. Carter, a career Air Force veteran who was a machine gunner and flight engineer on B-29's, flying more than 25 missions over Austria and enemy controlled parts of Europe during WWII. Jim was a prisoner of war, who survived German torment, and went on to fly missions during the Korean War and hospital flights during the Vietnam war.
Patty became Patricia H. Shandley-Carter and, as husband and wife, they were married almost 24 years until Master Sergeant Carter was buried at Ft. Bayard National Cemetery in New Mexico in 2015.
Five years later, as the Covid-19 pandemic and political hatred ravaged America, Patty was two days short of her 86th birthday when she passed away. However, her last 15 years of life were peaceful, living in the beautiful surroundings, at almost 7,000 feet in elevation, in the Gila National Forest. She was never lonely, being surrounded by the love of the monks and priests of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, as well as the nuns of St Joseph Monastery, which her generosity founded, and her family.
A funeral mass will be celebrated Thursday, December 17th at 10am at Our Lady of GuadalupeMonastery. So, as the arc of life comes full circle, Patricia H. Shandley-Carter will be laid to rest next to Master Sergeant Carter at Ft. Bayard National Cemetery concluding the service.
Arrangements are with Terrazas Funeral Chapels “Trusted care for the ones you love” ~ 575-537-0777. To send condolences, visit www.terrazasfuneralchapel.com.