Patsy Darlene Ames

Patsy Darlene Ames was born on March 25, 1932 in Blackfoot, Idaho to Arthur Earl Neihart and Afton Isobell Huesser. She died peacefully and returned to her Heavenly Father on July 22, 2013 in Glendale, Arizona from pancreatic cancer. She was born with red hair that she never liked but instead wished for a color that was not so dramatic and conspicuous.

When she just a young child her parents divorced. It was into the loving home of her Grandmother Daniels and her husband, Ana Daniels, that Patsy was fortunate to go. Her grandmother insisted that Patsy refer to Adna as simply “Ad” rather than as Grandpa because, her grandmother pointed out, “he was not her grandfather” because her grandfather had previously died. That is not to imply that Grandmother Daniels or Adna treated Patsy any differently. In fact, they loved her and delighted in helping her to grow and mature. Patsy’s two younger siblings did not accompany her. Instead, her sister, Beverly Jean stayed with her mother and her brother, Larry Adna, lived with his father. Her father later married again and had several additional children.

Patsy’s earliest memory of living with the Daniels was at a place known as Swanson’s Ranch in Pocatello. Swanson’s Ranch was a ranch in the sense of having chickens and pigs and other farm animals as well as orchards. At Swanson’s, the children remembered the pigs and chickens being butchered as a normal activity of the time period. On the ranch there were fields to be worked. In the morning Ad would take a team of horses and whatever piece of equipment he needed to use and go into the fields to work. At dinnertime (as the noon meal was called in those days) Grandma Daniels would go to the corral and get a very gentle horse named Brownie. She would lead Brownie to the stand beside the porch and Patsy would get on, go down to the fields and pick up Ad to come eat. After eating, Patsy and Ad would go back to the fields, Patsy would bring Brownie back to the porch at the house and get off so that Grandma could return Brownie to the corral. In the evening Ad would bring the team and the equipment back to the barn and put them away.

Leaving Swanson’s Ranch, the Daniels and Patsy moved to King Hill, Idaho. Patsy remembers walking up a hill to school and returning at lunch time to her home where Grandma Daniels would serve her lunch. After lunch, they both would walk partway to the school and then Patsy would again walk up the hill to finish school for the day. Later the Daniels moved to Patsy’s birth town of Blackfoot into a house located at 1397 Center Street.

Sometime between her second and third grade in school Patsy suffered the trauma of leaving her very much loved Grandmother Daniels and Ad, when her mother came to take her to live with her and Patsy’s younger sister, Jean. Many years later Grandmother Daniels would remember the event with much emotion. She resolved never to take in another grandchild as she had Patsy. This was not because it had been a burden but rather quite the opposite. It was because she had grown to love and treasure Patsy so much and the pain of the separation was intense.

Whereas Patsy had known the comfort and security of a home with a husband and a wife that loved each other and cared for her as loving grandparents would, she now began a very difficult period of her life that was to continue for eight more years and would not end until she married at age sixteen.

When she was initially retrieved by her mother, she lived first in Pocatello, Idaho. Patsy and Jean attended school across the street at Lincoln Grade School and Patsy subsequently attended Irving Jr. High. At lunch Patsy and Jean would return from school to their home where Patsy would make lunch. Following lunch it was Patsy’s job to ensure that Jean’s face was cleaned and her hair combed before both returned to finish the day of schooling.

On February 17, 1943 Afton married a man named Lavell (Val) Haskell who was divorced. The new family moved to Ketchum, Idaho next to a bar where Val tended bar and Afton worked in an adjoining restaurant. It was Patsy’s job to make pies at home that were subsequently sold in the restaurant where her mother worked. It was while in Ketchum that Patsy graduated the 8th grade.

Afton and Val moved to Sun Valley and left Jean and Patsy behind in Ketchum where the girls lived on their own in a small trailer house. Jean continued to attend school in Ketchum but Patsy had to catch a school bus and attended Hailey High School for one year since there was no high school in Ketchum. After completing the ninth grade Afton and Val moved the family to Pocatello.

Tired of living the life that she was, Patsy received permission from her mother to begin life on her own at the young age of fifteen. She gained full-time employment at the National Laundry and Dry Cleaners and began to live on her own at the “Pocatello House” on Center Street where she rented a room and shared bathroom facilities with the other renters. She had learned how to work hard and to take care of herself from a young age and so at age fifteen she worked the life of an adult, earning her own money and paying her own bills without assistance.

On Saturday nights Patsy would go to dances at the Deleta Ballroom where she was a popular dancer. It was on one of those nights that Patsy met Earl William Ames who had recently been honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. She was just sixteen when she met Earl and on their first date he proposed to her. She declined but agreed to a second date. On their second date Earl again proposed and this time she accepted. They were married on June 28, 1948.

Despite the fact that Patsy was only 16 and Earl was only 20 when they were married, they remained married and, in fact, remained very happily married. Patsy was a very hard worker her entire life and devoted her life to her children and family. She often said that all she had ever wanted in life was to be a wife and a mother.

In 1965 Patsy and Earl moved their family from Pocatello to Phoenix where she lived the remainder of her life. She was devastated on April 20, 1990 when Earl passed away following several months of heart disease. She devoted the next several years to raising her grandson who was only nine-years old at the time of Earl’s passing. Throughout her entire life, Patsy worked hard and did what she felt was in the best interest of her family. Because her early life had been fraught with pains and emotional heartache she was determined to provide a stable and loving home for her own children.

Patsy was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. One of the happiest days of her life occurred on March 20, 1965 when she was sealed to Earl and her children for time and for all eternity in the Idaho Falls Idaho temple. She served in a variety of church responsibilities but mostly in the Primary children’s organization as a secretary, a teacher or a nursery worker.

She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, a granddaughter, Courtney Elizabeth Ames, one sister, Beverly Jean, and two brothers, Dean Neihart and Warren Neihart.

She is survived by her children, Alan Earl (Pam) of Ocean Shores, WA, Douglas William of Glendale, AZ, Gaynel Marie Arsenault (Steve) of Camp Verde, AZ, Gary Adna (Lynn) of Idaho Falls, ID, Terralyn Ames (Ronald Morgan) of Beaumont, TX and Brett Jay (Teri) of Decatur, IL, and three brothers, Larry of Fort Hall, ID, Gene of Pocatello, ID, Flint of Blackfoot, ID and two sisters, Debra Sue and Renae both of Salt Lake City, UT.

She has fifteen grandchildren, twenty great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.