Pat Reeder was already established at Hazelwood High School and Florissant Valley Baptist Church when my family moved to St. Louis in 1966. She was attractive, talented, winsome, and disciplined, and on her way to success on several fronts.
I was the new kid in town, at church, and on campus. There was no romance, not then, not ever, but there was friendship of the best sort, starting slow and building to the end.
Friendship, C. S. Lewis famously said, is like two people standing side by side, staring with delight at the same thing (as opposed to eros—romantic love—which is two people standing face to face). What she and I both liked were church and school, music and stage, good times and good friends; and for two years, we shared enough of that to last a lifetime.
That lifetime came to an end two weeks ago when, in Aztec, New Mexico on her way with family to the Mesa Verde National Park, she slumped over in the back seat of a car.
Long before that, she traveled south to Oklahoma Baptist University to earn two degrees in music while I went east to Georgetown College to follow my calling as a minister. We both got married, established homes, raised children.
Her education took her to Columbia where she earned a doctor of juris prudence while I went to Louisville and finished as a doctor of philosophy in theology. She settled in Jefferson City, Missouri, while I skipped from Indiana to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Georgia.
Pat served with the Attorney General of Missouri and, now and then, as a public defender, upholding the very best of the ideals of the law. I admired her greatly, respected her intellect and skill, and was sorry our paths did not cross more often.
A phone call now and then was the most we could do. For a time, her work as an investigator took her near where I was living, and she always drove out of her way to come for a visit.
Six years ago, Pat and I tried to put together a homecoming, of sorts, for the tight-knit youth group of our church in St. Louis. It didn’t work, as we were scattered then and even more so now. She showed up at a luncheon I was hosting in St. Louis, at the Aquinas Institute, an event of the Academy of Preachers. She stood and testified: of church, and preaching, and our friendship. It still rings in my ears and warms my heart.
Three years ago, her choir from First Baptist Church of Jefferson City came to Savannah, Georgia, singing for folk along the way. She called to my home further south on the Georgia coast and asked me to join them for a bus tour of that delightful city. Before or after the tour, I don’t remember, I did as I was asked and spoke the words of what we call a devotional.
It was the last time.
Without warning, preceded by no disease or ailment, her time came. The doctors in New Mexico kept her alive until her daughters arrived from Kansas City. Shortly after, they cremated her body. A classmate posted on our Facebook page, “Oh, this took my breath away!” She spoke for all of us.
This Saturday, June 11, 2022, hundreds will gather in the sanctuary of First Baptist Church where, for 30 years, she sat at the keyboard of the grand piano doing what she was created to do: making music with my friends (as Willie would say). I will do my small part in the ceremony, summarizing her life and testifying to our friendship of 56 years.
It won’t be enough, and mostly it will be too late.
What I want to say is what needed to be said two years or even two months ago. I will say in public what I wished I had said to her private, “I love you, Pat. You have been a great gift from God. I treasure each moment and every memory. Thanks be to God for all you have meant to me, “mostly” (I will add, in the words of John Prine) “from ten miles away.”
Rest in Peace, Pat, and Rise in Glory.
(June 2022)
