2507 Briargrove Dr.
Austin, TX 78704
December, 2024

www.patandmeloakes.com

Dear Family and Friends,

We wish you all the joys of the season. The year started off with a visit from Cleveland nephew, Stuart Oakes and his husband, Jay Ruffner. We met them in Waco and visited the wonderful Waco Mammoth National Monument which has the nation's first and only recorded evidence of a nursery herd of ice age Columbian mammoths. Some were 14 ft tall and weighed 20,000 lbs. The Baylor University museum was also outstanding. The Dr. Pepper Museum not so much.

In April, Beth, Sarah and Mardie came at Easter for a short visit. Great to all be together.

In May, Mel's tennis buddies, Kate Monahan and Mike Mullen, celebrated his 89th birthday with a party that included many of his friends. We celebrated our 62nd anniversary with a cake during fellowship time at church.

In June, we, along with many family members, went to Palo Alto to participate in grandson Ethan’s graduation from Stanford in computer sciences. He started a summer internship with Apple Computer the following Monday. He will return to Stanford in the fall to earn a master's. Sarah and Mardie squired us around making for an easier trip. Pat celebrated her 84th birthday.

Beth and Eugene continue balancing their time between California and Iowa. Beth continues to enjoy her job overseeing much of the chamber music at UI. (This summer she will be taking two student quartets to Prague for 10 days.) Eugene is thriving as the Director of Finance and Operations in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford. Both Beth and Eugene love the opportunity to spend so much time in California. Emily is living her best life with her girlfriend Annika and another couple in Northhampton, MA.  Ethan will join Apple's Audio and Media Technologies group as a software engineer developer in May after receiving his master's in March. The group provides the media foundation for all of Apple's innovative products, including iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro.

Sarah and Joe stay busy with work and outdoor activities. They both love indoor rock climbing and hiking.  Surprising both of them, Sarah has been enjoying following the Boston Celtics, Joe's team. She also continues her study of Italian on Duolingo. She and Mel (Spanish) follow each other's progress.

Mardie & Durham have made a big move this year and are now living in Chevy Chase, Maryland, (a few hundred feet from Washington DC) with her partner Aaron Kramer, his daughter Sigrid (a freshman) and Sven (a junior) who live half time with them and half time with their mom, Lotta, who is just 10 minutes away. Their oldest, Nils-Erik, is a sophomore at Vanderbilt. Durham is in 8th grade at a phenomenal school, The Lab School of Washington. He’s enjoying his classes, has made a lot of friends, but his favorite part of the move is living with the family dog, Freja. He is enjoying piano and, after three months in a back brace recovering from a back injury, he looks forward to getting involved in sports in the new year. Tony’s plan is to move to the area next year. Mardie is enjoying living so close to Sarah and Joe, although now she misses living so close to Ethan, Eugene and Beth in the Bay Area! When they aren’t working on blending families, Mardie and Aaron are busy building a business to improve access to kidney transplants, with an initial focus on improving transportation & logistics related to organ transplantation. 
 
Our big news on the health front was the results of a new test for Parkinson's which concluded with 95% accuracy that Pat does not have Parkinson's. The good news has been tempered by difficulty withdrawing from medication that she has been on for over five years. There is little guidance since few people have had her history. Though asymptomatic, Pat had a carotid artery stent inserted this year.

Both Pat and Mel are staying busy. Pat is still writing the Personals column for the church newsletter and chairing the women’s church book club.  She also organizes an every other week Winter-Brown-George Cousin's Zoom.  She enjoys her monthly lunch with the retirees from St. Andrews Episcopal School. She does hours of PT every day trying to stay as strong as she can for as long as she can, this depite challenging back pain.  She and her sisters talk almost every night on the phone with brother Robert joining them occasionally.  Pat and Mel walk three mornings a week with a neighborhood group.  Mel helps run the men’s book club, is playing tennis as often as he can (usually 2 mornings a week). He continues to work on his various websites (Family, UT Physics History, Warren County African-American Schools History, Redwood and Oak Ridge High Schools, CCofAHistory),   He is continuing his Spanish via Duolingo, upgrading to the AI version has been a major advancement.  They both enjoy Pat's brother, Robert's MITA free music presentations via Zoom.

One of the many liabilities of old age is the loss of good friends, this year we lost Fran Briggs and Betsy Russell, church friends, and Donna Jobe an early neighbor and long time friend. We mourn also the loss of Pat's cousin Judi Medeiros. We are however blessed with great neighbors and many supportive friends and family.

Wishing you good health and peace in these most trying of times in the history of our country. May the New Year bring happiness to you.

Pat and Mel