Patricia McAdams Schreter
November 26, 1933 - September 25, 2017
Patricia McAdams Schreter passed away peacefully at her home in Berkeley on September 25, 2017 after a full and active life. Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Pat ventured far outside New England. As a child she attended a cowboy camp during her summers and travelled frequently to visit family in Illinois, Santa Barbara and Bermuda. Pat attended college at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she met her first husband, Walter John Trowbridge (Laddie). After they married they traveled through Europe, bicycled through Norway and lived in Normandy, France for a time before settling down in Berkeley where their three daughters were raised: Rebecca (1957), Catharine (1959), and Cynthia (1960).
After marrying her second husband Jean-Paul Schreter, Patricia pursued her passion for art. She sketched her family, plants from her garden, the horses that she and her daughters rode and the raccoons that frequented the back yard, using any available scrap of paper, cardboard or napkin. She was known mostly for her exquisite watercolors of the wildflowers of the Sierra Nevada. She also loved music, playing her grandmother’s violin as well as the blues harmonica. She took her family on frequent trips to the beach, long camping trips especially to her favorite place—Yosemite. She taught the family to canoe, ride horses, camp, and, later, even cross-country ski. She had a lifelong passion for learning and went back to school to study astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley. In 1980 she set off to India to see the complete eclipse of the sun. After studying Japanese language for many years, she travelled around Japan with her daughters. Two of her unfulfilled ambitions were to ride horseback on the Mongolia Steppe and to cross-country ski across the Sierras. She was a unique, exceptional person, inquisitive and studious. She was a wonderful mother and an inspiration to all who met her.
Pat is survived by two daughters Catharine Trowbridge (William Bryant) of Berkeley and Cynthia Trowbridge (Hal Ross) of Newport, OR, three grand-daughters Raina, Lauren, and Marnie Bryant, her sisters Nancy Phipard of Florida and Bobby Hoyt of Illinois, many nieces and nephews, and two former husbands Walter Trowbridge (Asiati) of Las Vegas, NV and Jean-Paul Schreter (Joyce Gray) of Richmond, CA. She was predeceased by her parents (William and Jean McAdams) and daughter Rebecca Trowbridge.
There will be a celebration of her life on Saturday November 25 at 2 pm for friends and family at her daughter’s home in Berkeley. For more information, please call Catharine at 510-847-2975.