Patricia Elaine "Patti" Guest

Patricia “Patti” Elaine Guest, 84, of Oklahoma City, after waging a long-fought battle with Alzheimer’s, left this life on August 25, 2025, and, now joyously reunited with her parents, sister Freida, brother Marion Cecil, and, most especially, her precious son Bill, is no doubt wondering why she fought so hard to stay. Perhaps it is human nature to keep fighting, and Patti indeed fought the good fight. Even as Alzheimer’s, that most malevolant of thieves, attempted to steal the light within Patti, we could see it still glowing, however faintly, until the very end. Alzheimer’s could not steal everything—and now she is fully restored.

The youngest of four siblings, Patti was born on September 21, 1940 to Daisy Grace (Bonner) and Marion Emerald Flippo, in Wright City, Oklahoma, a lumber and milling “company town” located in the southeast part of the state in McCurtain County. Patti would observe rather wryly that her family, like virtually every other family in Wright City, barely got by. But, as she also observed, when everyone else was as poor as your own family, you didn’t know enough to realize how bad things were. Making do was just something everyone did, and she recounted proudly that her mother Daisy made the most beautiful dresses for her and her sisters using flour sacks turned inside out as dress fabric.

The forced frugality of her early years engendered a lifelong abhorrence of wasteful spending, which morphed into a zeal for garage and estate sales. While some of her acquisitions might have been questionable (a certain possum coat comes to mind), she truly had a connoisseur’s eye, and her various homes reflected an innate sense of style that was, uniquely, Patti. Those of us who knew and loved Patti were amazed at what can only be described as a God-given talent for putting together the oddest assemblage of finds culled from her estate sale adventures, and arranging them in ways that were unexpected but always elegant. Having thus put together what to the rest of us seemed the perfect arrangement of furniture and accessories, Patti was known to change it up—frequently. If there is no furniture in heaven for Patti to arrange and rearrange, let there at least be a multitude of estate sales for her enjoyment!

There were two overarching events in Patti’s life, the first of which was the amputation of her left leg when she was 18, the result of a truck driver hitting her car. Many of us were completely unaware, at least until we were admitted into the Inner Circle of Friends of Patti, that she even wore a prosthetic leg, she was that determined not to let it define her or slow her down in any way. Although her family and close friends knew, of course, one of her dearest friends, Patricia Steffens, tells the story of her youngest son Aaron rushing in one day to breathlessly tell her that “There is a leg in Patti’s car!”, not realizing that the leg was Patti’s leg, albeit a prosthetic one. Another friend happened in on Patti one day as she sat on the floor, legless (well, one leg less), making adjustments on her prosthetic leg with a Dremel. That occasion must have been between visits to her prosthetist, Mark Ashford, who she saw on a frequent-enough basis that he also became an “Inner Circle Friend of Patti.” Although Mark worked in the Ft. Worth-Dallas area locations of Hanger Clinic, he often made the drive to Hanger Clinic’s Oklahoma City location, just to save Patti the long drive to Ft. Worth. Patti never pitied herself or asked for any favors because of that fake leg, and if you were her friend you loved her all the more for her independence and refusal to let that leg be all that people saw when she walked into a room. She was certainly more than that leg, and, as interesting a conversation starter though it might be, her friends cannot remember a single time that she initiated a conversation about it. She did, however, love to talk about her “kids,” the students at the University of Oklahoma, where she worked for many years in administration at the Huston Huffman Physical Fitness Center. Years after her retirement, former students who she had helped at the Center would recall her fondly, and she them. It was never just a job to her, and the students knew it, seeking her out especially because they knew she cared.

The other seminal event in Patti’s life was the birth—and the untimely death in 2008—of her only child, Bill Powell Guest. For 45 years, he hung the moon and stars for her, and only her deeply-held Christian faith that the days of our lives are numbered from the womb gave her the strength to continue her journey in this life without him. And though she grieved mightily for her son, her faith that she would see him again gave her a serenity that was both remarkable and enviable.

It was because of Bill that two of the most enduring friendships of Patti’s life were formed. In 1969, Patti’s husband and Bill’s dad, Billy Ray Powell, was dying, and Patti knew she had to get a job. Frantic, she turned to her back-fence neighbors, Patricia and John Steffens, and made what must have been for her a very difficult request, given her lifelong reluctance to ask for help. But she needed someone to watch Bill while she worked, and so she made the difficult ask. The Steffens, who had two young sons of their own, Aaron and Shawn, one younger and one older than Bill, never hesitated. Bill, who was five at the time, walked right into their lives—and into their hearts. From that point on, the Steffens’ family became Bill’s and Patti’s family. To the end of Patti’s life, their friendship was steadfast and their care for Patti unwavering and without complaint. Were we all so lucky to have friends such as they! Patricia and John, and Jeanette Timmons, a relative latecomer to the Inner Circle of Friends of Patti, made certain that Patti was accompanied right up to the pearly gates, where God welcomed her with open arms and restored her fully and completely.

Patti was preceded in death by her parents, Daisy Grace (Bonner) Flippo and Marion Emerald Flippo, her brother, Marion Cecil Flippo, her sister, Freida Lois (Flippo) Evans, and her son, Bill Powell Guest. Also preceding her in death was her first husband, Billy Ray Powell, and Jack Guest, whom she subsequently married and who adopted her son Bill. She is survived by her sister Nancy Louise (Flippo) (Williams) Barre, as well as her nephew, Alan Gordon Williams, who after Bill’s death became his Aunt Patti’s telephone buddy, often having long conversations into the night about anything and everything. Although he was still working at the time and living near Ft. Worth, Alan made sure that Patti felt the embrace of family, taking her on several road trips after Bill’s death. Although the ostensible purpose was to visit chapels along their planned route, Alan knew that the road trips were completely secondary to the talks and companionship they enjoyed along the way. Patti is also survived by her niece, Harmony Carol Williams, who as a child spent cherished time with her Aunt Patti and fondly remembers her great style, both in interior design and attire, as well as her chicken and dumplings. Patti is also survived by her stepchildren Ronda Guest Townsend, Montey Guest, and Wesley Powell, and the aforesaid Inner Circle of Friends of Patti, most particularly John and Patricia Steffens, Mark Ashford, and Jeanette Timmons. Patti’s family and friends would also like to thank the dedicated and caring staff at Touchmark, to which special thanks must be given to those in the memory care unit, as well as the hospice staff at LifeSpring. We are forever grateful to each of you.

A memorial service will be held at 10:00 a.m. on September 27, 2025, at Watchorn Chapel at St. Luke’s Methodist Church in Oklahoma City, where Patti was a devoted member for many years, as well as a faithful attendee of St. Luke’s Esther Women Lectures. She had an insatiable curiosity about almost everything, and doubtless is now enjoying the wisdom of the ages.

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For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV