Our mom was a teacher. She was a teacher of English and Journalism by profession for nearly 40 years, primarily at Douglas County High School in Castle Rock, Colorado, but also at Memphis State University and, when she started her career, in Rolla, Missouri public schools.  Even after she retired, she never stopped learning and sharing her knowledge with others, primarily through her volunteer work with Denver Pet Partners where she and her beloved therapy dogs, Luke, Cinder, and Abby worked with disadvantaged youth. She was an avid reader and loved music. She and her friends enjoyed taking in concerts at Swallow Hill down the block from her home in south Denver, where John Davis was one of her favorite performers. He even dedicated a song to her: Hamlet Redux.

Described as a "tough old ranch girl," she spent her early years on ranches in De Beque and later in Evergreen where she rode her horses and raised an abandoned fawn. She graduated from South High School and then from Carleton College in Northfield, MN in 1960.

Fran impacted thousands of students throughout her teaching career, and that impact was often a lasting one. She kept in close touch with several of her students going back to the beginning of her career, and she received letters from students thanking her for the role she played in shaping them as people and professionals. They lauded her toughness and exacting standards that pushed them to excel and to not give up on themselves. She was tough, but fair.

To us, she was Mom, and she taught us to be strong individuals, independent and resourceful. Becoming a single parent when we were in our early teens, we watched her hold down two jobs to make ends meet. For a time, she worked as a cocktail waittress at night, coming home after the restaurant closed and waking up three or four hours later to teach again all day. During this period, she took over advising the Douglas County High School student newspaper, The Castle Courier, and led the student journalism staff to produce papers that consistently won state and national awards.  She spent late nights helping the students lay out the newspaper on light boards in the days before desktop publishing. And when desktop publishing on computers became the norm, she taught her students to excel in the new medium, always teaching herself what she needed to know to maintain the high standards she set for herself and her students.

To increase her income and assure her financial security and ours, she went back to school and earned two masters degrees, one in political science from CU Denver and the other in journalism from Memphis State University, where she also advised the student newspaper and taught journalism classes. She also took a sabbatical one year to write for the Douglas County Daily News-Press and to serve as Managing Editor. During that year, she won four first-place awards for her writing in the Colorado Press Women's Annual Communication Contest.

In 1982, through her work with the Colorado High School Press Association (CHSPA), now the Colorado Student Media Association, Fran began a collaboration with Governor Richard Lamm’s press secretary (Sue O’Brien) to teach Colorado high school students real-world journalism skills in a press-conference format. Originally called the Governor’s Press Conference, today the Capitol Hill Press Conference takes place in the Old Supreme Court Chambers in the State Capitol, normally in the month of February.

She was passionate about politics and about the causes she supported which included protecting the environment and animals. She was most assuredly a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and was generous with her support of candidates that shared her views. She was a staunch defender against censorship: of books taught in schools and of student journalists' freedom of speech. She was the co-organizer, director and lobbyist for legislation, sponsored by the Colorado High School Press Association, which returned to Colorado high school journalists their first amendment rights that had been lost in the US Supreme Court decision Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier. The bill was signed into law by Governor Roy Romer in June, 1990, making Colorado then one of only four states to guarantee high school journalists First Amendment protection. In 1985, she was named the Colorado High School Press Association's Journalism Teacher of the Year, and in 2006, she received the Journalism Education Association's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Fran loved her German Shepherds, and she shared that love with her community through her service work. In addition to her therapy work with her dogs after she retired, she also tracked the lost and searched for survivors with Colorado Search and Rescue in the 1970s and during the Big Thompson Flood, Colorado’s deadliest flash flood that killed 143 people in 1976.

She was a grandmother of four:  Kevin's children -- Pierson and Nathan -- and Tracy's children -- Marco and Sofia -- and they lit up her world. She was a loving sister to her two brothers, Lew and Cliff, and she carried on the literary legacy of her father, Lewis B. Patten, an author of more than 100 Western novels, through her management of the Gunsmoke Empire, the trust set up to continue publication and ensure copyright protection of his books. 

Our mom won two battles against cancer during the last fifteen years of her life, but she wasn't able to beat the pancreatic cancer that took her life on January 30, 2016. Kevin and I both spent the last several weeks of her life caring for her, and absorbing her final lessons about the importance of family, friendship, loyalty and love. She was loved and admired by many, and we will miss her.