Patricia Margaret Langfitt Chase

submitted by: Brynlee Bodily


On November 29, 1960, a baby girl was born in Mercy Hospital in Durango, Colorado. Her name was Patricia Margaret Langfitt (she likes to go by Patty) and she has grown up to be a very interesting person. Her parents were Charles Langfitt and Margaret Harper. She has two older brothers named Arthur and Johnny. She mostly grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado and Reno, Nevada. When she was really young, her brother Johnny fell out of a truck, hit his head and became mentally handicapped. He was just 9 years old.

When my grandma was just eight, her parents divorced. Eventually both of her parents remarried. When her parents were going to get divorced, they sent her to stay with her grandparents on their farm in Colorado for the summer. She was nine when her dad remarried. The woman he married was named Dawn Pollard. She had six kids from her previous marriage. Their names are Bruce, Dave, Sherry, Debby, Lori, and Darcy. Her Mom remarried when my grandma was ten, to a man named John Anderson. He had three kids from his previous marriage. Their names are Richard, Michael, and Alice. Her stepdad got in a fight with his daughter Alice, and disowned her before Patty’s mom married him. He wanted to disown her as well, because she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (she was 18 at the time), and he thought it was wrong. Her mom didn’t let him. She had a dog growing up that lived at her dad’s house. She was a Collie named Hoitey. She was a golden color and she loved to chase coyotes away from their property. She died at 12 years old when a coyote attacked and killed her. Patty spent all her summers at her grandparent’s house in Colorado from ages 8 to 15. Their farm was 395 acres! It just so happened that her cousins lived next door to her grandparent’s farm, so she always had a lot of people to play with.

When she was younger, she went to several different Elementary schools, but her very favorite was called Veteran’s Memorial Elementary school, because they went on a field trip to the Donner Mining camp. She was in 4th grade when she went there and she met her best friend on that field trip. Her name was Leslie Brown, who was Native American. Sadly, Leslie moved away.

Her first job was at McDonalds (a job I highly approve of) when she was just fifteen. She did a lot of things there, including making shakes, working at the register, and being the shift manager. She did not like it there. Her first car was a 1972 Chevy Vega. It was a terrible car, and hard to drive, because it had a three-on-the-tree transmission. Also, if you needed to go up a hill, you might as well forget about it!

One of her favorite memories growing up was with the United Nations Pilgrimage for Youth. She was seventeen years old and got to sit through some United Nations meetings. She also got to spend two days in Washington DC and then a week in New York where she visited the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers, and the Empire state building.

When she was 24 and going to college, she went to a church campout in June of 1984. While she was there, she lost one of her favorite earrings. She had a whole group of people helping her look for it. There was one guy there named Brent Chase that helped her look for it and ended up asking her out on a date. The earring was never found, but Patty met her future husband that day. They were engaged in two weeks after they met and were married in...
(story was cut off here)