PAT FUNSTON

10/09/1942 - 02/25/2023

Mary Patricia Funston passed away peacefully at home in Laguna Woods, CA on February 25th 2023. She is joining her parents Lucille and Bill Morris, her brother Bill, and her beautiful granddaughter Luciana Funston in heaven.

Mary, known as Pat to her friends and GG or Mama Pat to her grandchildren, was born in Hampton, Virginia on October 9, 1942. From an early age, it was clear that she was blessed with inner strength, a unique perspective, and a depth of compassion that would reveal itself over the course of her life in beautiful ways.

One such way was her connection with animals. Pat loved dogs and they loved her. As a child growing up on Melville Road, Pat could be found sitting on a knee-high wall on the side of her home holding meetings with her companion Lady Gal, a black and white mixed breed, and a group of neighborhood dogs who were as fond of Pat as she was of them. As she told it, “that’s where we would sit and talk about how they were doing, who was being friendly and who wasn’t.” Years later her high school principal apparently expressed great surprise when she was accepted to James Madison University. Not because of her grades, but because he learned that she had confidently listed “Jane Eyre and Lassie Come Home” as her two favorite books on her application.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in accounting, Pat proudly served as an aid to Governor J. Dewey Daane at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. It was here in 1969 that she met her husband, Lance Funston. They went on to live in Connecticut and Pennsylvania before moving to Houston in 1975 to raise their children. After their divorce in 1980, that inner strength and perspective that defined her as a child once again emerged as she embraced the role of a single parent with a laser focus. She ensured that her children knew that they were dearly loved through her words and her actions. She was present in every sense of the word as she graciously did the job of two. Never missing a football game, wrestling match or theater performance. Pat led by example through her passion for serving others with volunteer work at Church, the Kinkaid School library and even co-chairing the School’s annual book fair.

In 1988, Pat began working for renowned Pediatric Neurologists Dr. Bob Zeller and Dr. Carlos Rivera in private practice as a healthcare administrator. She later moved with the doctors to Baylor College of Medicine at Texas Children’s Hospital and retired after 27 years of helping children.

Her children and grandchildren were her greatest joy and after retirement she moved to the West Coast to be near them. In the last years of her life, despite facing medical challenges, Pat remained her positive, humor driven, loving self. Her strength, rooted in positivity, was remarkable.

Pat was a compassionate listener who always gave thoughtful advice that impacted lives in meaningful ways. Many days and nights were spent at her home sitting around a wooden table carved by her father. There you would find good friends of all ages, lively conversation, board games, delicious wine and food, a dog (or two) and Pat’s authentic perspective and laughter filling the room for all of us to treasure.

Pat is survived by her loving children Brent Thomas Funston of Laguna Beach and wife Melissa, her daughter Nancy Heather Funston of Los Angeles, and her grandchildren, Grace and Sadie 7, Julianna 5, Maximiliano 3, and Benjamin 1.

She was a phenomenal woman, friend, mother and grandmother. She will be missed greatly and loved forever.