• Courtesy
• Melinda Patterson

Melinda Miller Patterson, 76, died peacefully on July 10, 2024, in Montpelier, Vt., after a long battle with dementia. In her final years, she repeatedly reassured her family that she had no regrets and that she felt lucky to have lived such an extraordinary life.

Melinda was born in 1948 in Lower Merion Township, Pa., the second child of Cornwall and Janet Miller. She enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Essex, Conn., and spent summers living aboard the family boat with her parents and her older sister, Emily. One summer day at the mouth of the Connecticut River, Emily pointed out a teenage boy napping on the beach — it was John Patterson, whom Melinda would end up marrying many years later.

Before marriage, Melinda set off to chart her own course, buoyed by a love of learning and a perpetually sunny spirit of optimism and goodwill. She attended Abbot Academy and Smith College, where she took every possible course related to Africa. After graduating she moved to London for a fellowship at the BBC and then set off across the Sahara on an epic overland traverse of the African continent.

Much to the relief of her parents, Melinda eventually returned stateside and settled in New York City, where she renovated an apartment, worked in publishing at American Heritage and the Nation, and took night classes toward a business degree at New York University. She and John reunited and were married in Essex in 1981.

The newlyweds settled in Durham, Conn., where Melinda designed a timber-frame home at the top of a hill. The builders finished up just before her son Timothy was born, in 1982. Luke, her second son, arrived in 1984. Melinda was a devoted mother, and although she always had a creative project in the works and founded two successful small businesses when her children were small, she prioritized her role as a parent. Even in her final years, when her capacity was greatly diminished by dementia, she retained a remarkable ability to befriend and connect with young children.

Melinda’s love of travel never waned, and after becoming a mother she simply brought her boys along for the adventure. Flipping through Melinda’s collection of photo albums, we see her broad smile again and again — trekking in New Zealand, riding horseback over a mountain pass in Ecuador, bundling her little boys onto a wooden dhow off the coast of Zanzibar, revisiting her old neighborhood of Hampstead Heath in London and rafting the whitewater rivers of the American West.

In 1994 Melinda and John moved to Vermont, settling in Mill Village, not far from Craftsbury Common. In Craftsbury, as was her practice everywhere she lived, Melinda volunteered for community organizations and welcomed a steady flow of friends, neighbors and travelers. Among those visitors were several international exchange students, and Melinda particularly cherished her relationships with those students and their families.

Late in life, as dementia began to steal away her memories, Melinda and John returned to Connecticut and lived in a cozy house with a view of the river, just down the street from the church where they were married. John predeceased her in 2023, and Melinda made one last trip to Vermont. Her final months were spent in the memory care wing of the Gary Residence in Montpelier.

A celebration of life service will be held on Saturday, September 28, 11 a.m., at the United Church of Craftsbury in Craftsbury Common, Vt.