Barbara Sandy Patton

The family lived in Westchester County, New York until 1951 when her father accepted an offer to join a company then known as Tennessee Gas Transmission Company. They moved to Houston and settled in an unincorporated area that subsequently became a part of Piney Point Village. She graduated from Spring Branch High School, where she was a cheerleader, in 1960. She attended Briarcliff College in Briarcliff Manor, New York, for two years, and then The University of Texas, where she graduated in 1964 with a degree in economics.

At The University she met the love of her life, John Patton. They were married on August 8, 1964. On the return from their honeymoon she and John stopped in Austin, where she learned that the Barry Goldwater for President state campaign office was looking for help. She applied for a job and was hired. It was an event that changed her life, because a guy named George Bush was running for the U.S. Senate that year, and his campaign office was in the same building. They met on an elevator and became fast friends.

After John graduated from law school in 1965 they moved to Houston, where Barbara became totally involved in Republican politics until the birth of their first child in 1969. She thereafter continued her involvement on a volunteer basis, participating in every political campaign that President Bush ran, culminating in 1992 when she served as Co-Chair of his Texas State Re-election Campaign Committee. She was a volunteer in the George Bush Vice Presidential and Presidential Houston offices and in his post-Presidential office. She also served as president of the Post Oak Republican Women’s Club and was active in its successor, the Magic Circle Republican Women’s Club.

She was a long-time member of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, serving in several capacities, including the vestry, Chair of the Missions Committee and the St. Martin’s Foundation, the Docent Guild, the St. Martin’s Pre-School Board, the Hurricane Response Team, and as Co-Chair of a Stewardship campaign. She and John purchased several memorial trees to help beautify the campus, and they received the St. Martin’s Star Award in 2017 in recognition of their long and meritorious service to the church.

She was an avid tennis player, winning the women’s doubles championship at the Forest Club several times and playing competitively at the Houston Country Club, to which she and John belonged. She was also a member of Garden of the Gods Club in Colorado Springs, where she and John spent several summers and their honeymoon. She was a sustaining member of the Houston Junior League, and earlier in her life she supported the Houston Ballet, serving as Co-Chair of the first Nutcracker Market.

She was preceded in death by her parents. She is survived by her husband of fifty-two years, John J. Patton; their two children, John William Patton and Polly Patton Christie; John William’s wife Brenda and Polly’s husband Craig; John William and Brenda’s three children, Logan, Avery and Paige; and Polly’s two children with her former husband Evan Koch, Atticus and Tabitha. She is also survived by her sisters Judy Sandy Coleman and her husband Stan of Marina del Rey, California; and Bonnie Sandy Weekley and her husband David of Houston; John’s sister Paula Quinn and her husband, Michael, of Austin; several cousins, nieces and nephews; and her beloved Labrador retriever, Tank.

A memorial service and celebration of her life is to be conducted at two o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, the 5th of May, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, 717 Sage Road in Houston, where the Rev. Dr. Russell J. Levenson, Jr., Rector, and the Rev. Mary E. Wilson, Senior Associate Rector for Pastoral Care, will officiate.

Immediately following, all are invited to greet the family during a reception to be held at a venue which will be announced during the services.

In lieu of customary remembrances, the family requests with gratitude that those interest consider a gift to the St. Martin’s Endowment Fund; 717 Sage Road, Houston, TX 77056; or the charity of choice.

“She was an angel flying too close to the ground, full of love and greatly loved; and she will be terribly missed.”