Patricia Turner Mitchell

Pat was joy, love, and gratitude personified.

Patricia “Pat” Turner Mitchell, author and dear family member and friend, died in her sleep at her home in Spruce Pine, NC on June 21st 2021 at the age of 85.

Pat was born on April 2nd 1936 in Valdese, NC to her parents, David E.Turner and Edith McKinney Turner. She was the oldest of two siblings, James “Jim” Turner and Janice Turner Cline.

Pat grew up in the Crow Hill community of Valdese and attended Francis Garrou High School, graduating with the Class of 1954. Pat, always of an independent nature, moved to Charlotte and worked in a bank after graduation. At the advice of her father she waited to marry, marrying Jack Warren Mitchell at the age of 28 on July 25th 1964. The couple lived in various residences in the Charlotte area over the years as well as Liberty, MO, Orlando, FL, Tega Cay, SC, Burnsville, NC, and finally Spruce Pine, NC. Pat felt most drawn to the mountains of her mother’s ancestry and lived her final years there with Little Switzerland only a short drive away.

Education, reading, and being a lifelong learner were always important to Pat who took classes first at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City, MO and later at Central Piedmont Community College, Charlotte NC where she completed an Associate in Applied Science in Business Adminstration-Sales and Marketing. With a gift for math and the stock industry Pat worked for many years in corporate offices of a brokerage firm and finally as a registered broker serving as Vice President for Interstate/Johnson Lane Securities in Charlotte, North Carolina before retiring in 1998. Literature and history, particularly family history, were passions of Pat’s. She spent years doing research and collecting stories, letters, and artifacts in preparation to write her two family history-based books, Lifted to the Shoulders of a Mountain, published in 2007, and A Mountain to Climb, published in 2016. Pat had a lifelong passion for art which was further cultivated by her Aunt Mickey (Mildred Missouri McKinney Whitener Coe), an aspiring artist in her youth, and Mickey’s husband, Paul Austin Wayne Whitener, who soon took up painting when he first met Mickey. Paul eventually became an accomplished artist and with his wife’s help, he founded and directed The Hickory Museum of Art of which Pat was considered an ambassador for and active member of for many years. Pat’s love of art as well as music blended well with her desire to travel starting from a very young age. Pat spoke often and excitedly about her trips to Greece, Italy, Egypt, England, Ireland, and Scotland accompanied by her husband or various family members over the years.

Her dear husband Jack predeceased Pat in 2007. Pat is survived by her brother, Jim, and his wife, Revonda Turner, and their daughters, Jill Turner Mull and Jennifer Turner, and her sister, Janice, and her husband, John Cline, and their three children, John David Cline, Leslie Cline Ruf, and Shannon Cline McLaughlin and ten great grand nieces and nephews. Pat was well known in her community with many extended family members and friends, both old and new, and is also survived by her dear friend and neighbor of many years, Irene Boudreau.

Her cherished rescue dog, Scout, was dearly missed in the last year of her life, predeceasing her last spring.

Pat, never afraid of a challenge, took up our modern technology and spent a lot of time with her Facebook friends and family online, sharing her insight and beauty through photos and memories, one of her legacies that will live on.

There will be a short graveside ceremony in her honor on July 10th 2021 at 2:00 pm at the Burnette Cemetery in Little Switzerland, NC.

In her later years Pat voiced that she did not want a formal funeral but for all the people whose lives she had touched to celebrate her life in their own way and and in their own time through music, nature, beauty and joy.

In lieu of flowers please consider making a donation in her name to one or more of these organizations that were dear to Pat: The Hickory Museum of Art, at 243 Third Avenue NE, Hickory, NC 28601 http://hickoryart.org/support-hma, Mitchell County Animal Rescue at PO Box 308, Spruce Pine, NC 28777 https://www.mitchellcountyanimalrescue.org/donate , or The Nature Conservancy of NC at American Tobacco Campus, 334 Blackwell Street, Suite 300, Durham, NC 27701 https://www.nature.org/en-us/membership-and-giving/donate-to-our-mission/