The Dash Between: Patricia Beattie lost her sight but found her life’s work
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Few of Patricia Mason Beattie’s classmates at Elyria High School in the early 1950s knew that Pat was losing her eyesight to Stargardt’s disease, a type of juvenile macular degeneration.
“It wasn’t that she hid it,” her sister Judy Bell said. “She functioned so well, a lot of people didn’t realize it.”
Pat lost her central vision early in life and learned to look out of the corners of her eyes, using peripheral vision, to get by and much more.
To compensate for not reading textbook assignments, she listened attentively to her teachers.
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“Pat had an exceptional memory,” her sister Janice Stanko said. “This special gift left her free of most school homework, giving her plenty of time for copious extracurricular activities.”
As a teenager, Pat participated in Girl Scouts and Junior Achievement, received honors as a member of Elyria Assembly #13 Order Of Rainbow For Girls, led the Youth Council, wrote for her school and community newspapers, played team sports and drove a car.
“She actually passed Driver’s Ed. in high school and drove for 10 years,” sister Judy said. “When my kids told me they had to tell Aunt Pat when the traffic lights changed, I wouldn’t let them ride with her anymore.”
| The Dash Between: About this feature |
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The dates of birth and death that appear like bookends on a tombstone do not matter as much as the dash between those dates: The life that a person lived.
 Alana Baranick The Dash Between is an obituary feature written by Alana Baranick about regular folks from Lorain County and adjacent areas. Baranick wrote her first obit in 1985 when she was a reporter for The Chronicle. She wrote obituaries for Cleveland’s Plain Dealer from 1992 through 2008.  "Life on the Death Beat" She is the chief author of “Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers” and director of the Society of Professional Obituary Writers. She won the 2005 American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award in the Obituary category. Today, Alana Baranick examines The Dash Between May 14, 1936, when Patricia Mason Beattie was born in Elyria, and Feb. 10, 2010, when the retired director of public policy and consumer relations with the National Industries for the Blind died in Alexandria, Va., at age 73. The Dash Between is scheduled to appear in The Chronicle every other Sunday. To suggest a story or make a comment, contact Baranick at abaranick@chroniclet.com. Read more:
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In the 1960s, a doctor deemed Pat legally blind. Her driving days were over, but her career as an advocate for the blind and the handicapped skyrocketed.
“Her new life as a legally blind woman took her on new adventures, working with government officials, advocating for the blind community, lobbying for proper regulations for blind citizens and giving lectures around the USA, eventually lecturing overseas as well,” her sister Janice said.
Pat, who died Feb. 2, 2010, at age 73, retired as director of public policy and consumer relations with the National Industries for the Blind (NIB) in 2006. She received numerous awards for her service to the visually impaired.
She was born May 14, 1936, in Elyria and grew up at 127 Bellfield Avenue with three of her four younger sisters – Judy, Janice and Mary Lee Pankoff. Their youngest sister, Valerie Mason, was born when Pat was 19.
After their salesman-father bought Elyria Welding Service on the south side of town, the family moved into the house next door.
In her later years, Pat credited her father for her self-reliance.
“Looking back on my life, I’m glad my father accepted no excuses for less than adequate work,” Pat wrote in a short memoir. “When I didn’t get a pot clean enough and told him, ‘It looks okay to me,’ he said, ‘You can feel it.’ He taped tooth picks to the dials of the oven so that I could use it.
“He said, ‘I can’t take care of you for your lifetime, but I can teach you to take care of yourself.’ And he sure did!”
During her sophomore year, Pat began writing for the school newspaper, “The Herald.” Then she became a copy girl at the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, where she filled paste pots, tore off breaking news bulletins from the teletype and ran articles to the editor’s office.
The following year, Pat began reporting school news and sharing her views in a Chronicle column titled “A Chat With Pat.”
She went on to write for the women’s page and covered business, labor and political news before she married Norman S. Beattie, a 1952 Elyria alumnus, on July 15, 1961, at First United Presbyterian Church.
For a few years in the 1960s, the newlyweds lived in Nepal, Spain and Turkey. Norman handled assignments as a field engineer for International Telephone and Telegraph, while Pat worked for U.S. foreign service agencies.
When they returned to the states, they stayed in Elyria and Rocky River before moving to Sylvania, a suburb of Toledo, in 1973.
While raising their daughter, Kirsten Weeks, Pat took in foster daughters – a total of seven over the years – and volunteered with the Girl Scouts.
Pat, who had continued her education at Baldwin-Wallace and Oberlin colleges and the University of Toledo with such aids as recorded textbooks, became a peer counselor and outreach advocate for disabled adults for the Toledo Society for the Handicapped.
Newly divorced in the early 1980s, she became involved with various associations for the blind and moved to Arlington, Va.
Pat served as president of the Council of Citizens with Low Vision International and treasurer for the American Council of the Blind.
She worked for the American Foundation for the Blind and Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America before joining NIB’s management team in 1993.
In her retirement, Pat continued serving as a consultant for NIB and chaired the Virginia Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired’s rehabilitation council.
Pat, who went cross-country skiing with the Ski for Light organization for several years, returned to Elyria periodically over the last 30-plus years for family get-togethers, Order of the Eastern Star activities and class reunions.
“You wouldn’t have known she was blind except for the cane,” her high school classmate Shirley Messaros said. “She just blended in.”
Contact Alana Baranick at (216) 862-2617 or abaranick@chroniclet.com.
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