Patricia Keleher Odom

Patricia Keleher Odom was born in Chicago on January 24, 1934, the daughter of Leo and Leta Keleher. She and her younger brother, James, were raised in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. It was here that Patty met the person that would become her lifelong friend, Barbara Kiley.

Patty received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana, where she met Bruce Stuart Odom. On June 16, 1956, she married Bruce and quickly gave birth to three children: Scott Jeffrey, born in 1958, Peter Kent, born in 1960, and Diane, born in 1961. Bruce and Patty lived in the Chicago suburbs—Oak Park, Wilmette, and Arlington Heights—before Bruce took a job with IBM and they moved to White Plains New York, in 1966 and Atlanta in 1967.

In Atlanta, Patty finished her education, receiving a master’s degree in reading education from Georgia State University. She also developed an interest in politics; she was an early volunteer for the mayoral campaign of Maynard Jackson, who would become the first African American mayor of Atlanta in 1973. Patty worked as a teacher of remedial reading to high school students in and around Atlanta. After a divorce from Bruce, Patty moved with her children to New Canaan, Connecticut, to be closer to her lifelong friend, now Babs Posner, who lived in Rowayton. In 1999, Patty moved to Strawberry Hill Avenue in Stamford.

In Connecticut, Patty worked as a psychiatric technician at Stamford Hospital caring for the mentally ill. She later retired from this position and moved to Atlanta in 2011 to be closer to her son, Peter. In 2015, Patty moved into a group home in Silver Spring, Maryland, close to Peter and Peter’s wife, Eleanor. In Silver Spring, Patty was cared for by Daphne Sathya. Patty would die peacefully in Daphne’s home on January 27, 2018.

Patty is survived by her brother, James, her son, Peter, and his two children, Ryan James Odom and Shelby Odom, her daughter Diane, and Diane’s two children, Nicholas and Sarah Bender, Scott’s three children, Zachary, Georgia, and Rachel Odom, and a great granddaughter, Harper Grace Odom.