Pat Foster was something of a whirlwind, her family says.
“She was constantly going, never sat still,” said her daughter, Jean Miller, 73, of Barnhart. “She walked 3 miles every morning and every night. It was hard to keep up with her!”
Mrs. Foster died Jan. 17 at age 96. She was a longtime member of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Imperial and worked at Liguori Publications in Barnhart.
She grew up in Wellsville on a farm and rode a horse 3 miles to school each day. She graduated from tiny Wellsville High, where she played basketball, and headed to St. Louis to work at Barnes Hospital.
She was married at 19 in 1946 and had her son, the late David, a year later.
“My dad was an X-ray technician at the VA hospital, and they owned a rooming house that she took care of,” Jean said. “She had me and my twin sister, Judy, when David was not quite 2, so she had her hands full.”
The Fosters moved to Barnhart in 1952.
“Everyone thought they were crazy to move out here, this far from the city,” Jean said. “But they didn’t care.”
Mrs. Foster went to work at Liguori shortly afterward
“She always said she ‘did ZIP coding,’” Jean said. “ZIP codes were just beginning to come into use and I think that meant updating all the addresses.”
Youngest daughter Karen came along in 1957, and Mrs. Foster sewed dresses for all three girls.
The family liked camping, and the Fosters were involved with square dancing groups at home and at the Lake of the Ozarks, where they also enjoyed boating.
“She played pinochle with a group,” Jean said of her mother. “She was just always busy. Her idea of taking a nap was to lie on the floor with her feet on the couch for 10 minutes and then she’d get up and be ready to go for a few more hours.”
She was active in the church and with St. Pius X High School, which all four children attended.
When her husband retired in 1971, the Fosters bought a gas station/car repair service in Barnhart.
“She kept the books,” Jean said. “And she went back and forth looking after her mother in St. Louis until my grandma died in 1978.”
That year, the Fosters moved to a condo in Florida.
“She learned to swim after she moved down there,” Jean said. “They had a pool at the condo and she was always in the water.”
But family health concerns arose that shaped Mrs. Foster’s life for the next decade or more.
“Mom came back up (to Missouri) in 1982 and took my dad’s parents and his brother down to live in Florida,” Jean said. “Grandma died right away, but Grandpa lived until 1988 and Uncle Sam died in 1989. Meanwhile, my dad was diagnosed with kidney failure and she drove him to dialysis three times a week until he got a transplant in 1988. Her whole life during those years was being a caretaker.”
After her husband died in 2005, Mrs. Foster resumed a more active life.
“She volunteered at a church thrift store, she played cards with a group of other widows, they went out to eat,” Jean said. “She was on the board of her condo development. She did yoga every day, rain or shine, on Englewood Beach.”
She also started a financial club, according to Jean’s husband, Charlie.
“One of her friends’ husband worked for Edward Jones and he helped them,” Charlie said. “They would get together and choose stocks.”
At 83, Mrs. Foster and another great-grandmother made local news when they went parasailing.
“We didn’t know about it until after the fact,” Jean said. “I would never have let her do it! I don’t know what possessed her.”
At 92, Mrs. Foster decided it was time to move back to Missouri.
“She’d been talking about it,” Jean said. “I don’t know if something happened, but she thought it was time to come home. She flew up and we drove her car and she never got behind the wheel again.”
She lived at the Orchid Terrace independent senior living facility in St. Louis County.
But in early 2020 she had to go to Crystal Oaks for rehab after a fall.
“A week later they got locked down for COVID-19,” Jean said. “We only saw her through glass for months after that.”
Back at Orchid Terrace in early 2022, Mrs. Foster began to have falls and some memory problems.
“She needed more help, more eyes on her to keep her safe,” Jean said. “In July 2023 we moved her to Scenic View assisted living in Herculaneum, and she eventually went to the memory care unit and then to hospice.
“She was such a go-getter, and she just went downhill so fast. At the end, she said she was ready. She lived a good life, and the end was peaceful.
Mrs. Foster was a proud member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and enjoyed genealogical research.
“She was proud of how healthy she kept herself, how she took care of her body,” Jean said. “And she went to church faithfully. We’re going to Florida in March to see some of her friends. It’ll keep us busy, because she had so many.
“She was just a special lady.”
“Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.