Patricia Gilbert Sigler

Pat asked to be cremated and that her family scatter her ashes in the mountains.

Patricia Gilbert was born in Portland, OR, on Nov 3, 1935, the daughter of Robert and Kathleen Kelly Gilbert. After World War II her mother remarried and they moved to West Virginia where Pat lived for five years in Shrewsbury, Kanawha Count, and graduated in 1953 from East Bank High School. She studied at Concord College in Athens, WV, on a West Virginia Board of Governor’s Scholarship, and received a BS degree with honors in 1956. In 1974 she earned a Masters Degree in Education Administration at Duke University. She also was enrolled in the doctoral program at Duke and studied Community Health Practice at The University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

Before becoming a principal, Pat taught for 18 years, mainly math, science and art, in Kanawha County, WV, Fort Pierce, FL, Augusta, GA, and in High Point and Durham, NC. She served principal positions at

Carrington Junior High School and Little River Elementary School in Durham from 1974-79. After moving to Texas in 1979, Pat worked for a year as a health educator with The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, leaving to accept the principalship and open a new school, The Grace Ward Harby Junior High School in Alvin, TX. When she retired in 1995 she had been principal for 13 year at Alvin Elementary School.

She was a member of the first Texas Academy for School Administrators and Trinity Methodist Church in Tallahassee.

In 1995 she was certified in Reality Therapy through Dr. William Glasser’s International Training Institute for Reality Therapy in California. After retiring to Tallahassee, she worked for four years as a counselor at Turn About, Inc., a program for addictions and behavior modification in adolescents and their families.

Survivors include her husband, Joe Sigler, of Tallahassee; to whom she was married in Duke University Chapel in 1970; daughter, Tracy Vaughan of Fort Lauderdale, FL, grandchildren, David Dunaway (Erin) of Centennial, CO, Katy Dunaway of Fort Worth, TX, and Eli Dunaway of Tallahassee, and their father Mike Dunaway of Tallahassee; son-in-law, Dirk Dieterich, grandchildren Cody Dieterich (Rachel) of Austin, TX, and Mica Dieterich of San Francisco, two step-sons, Dan Sigler of Fort Myers, FL, and Chris Sigler of Brenham, TX, his wife, Julie and their children Alex and Anna; and a half brother, Terry Joe Chapman of Crawfordville, FL. She was preceded in death by a daughter, Diana Dieterich of Spicewood, TX, and her first husband, Paul Vaughan, of Hendersonville, NC.

A Celebration of Life will be held on Friday, November 3, 2023 at Culley's MeadowWood Funeral Home | 700 Timberlane Road Tallahassee.