Pat Keown: An Angel With Invisible Wings
A strong, dedicated woman whose passion and commitment are an inspiration to all who cross her path, Pat Keown is an angel with invisible wings. Raised on James Island, Pat started her career in nursing at Greenville General Hospital, got her bachelor’s degree at the University of South Carolina where she studied philosophy, theology and psychology. After receiving her masters degree in social work at the University of Louisville, Pat spent 25 years in Louisville, KY where she had an individual counseling practice and also worked as a psychiatric nurse.
When Pat’s brother, Harold, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, she decided it was time to come back to the Lowcountry. One of the reasons she chose Beaufort was so her family could come visit, go to the beach, and rekindle their love of this part of the country. “When I came here, it held me in such a way, the people, the land; I felt embraced and so loved here. The energy on Saint Helena Island and Port Royal spoke to me.”
A friend had invited her to interview at Beaufort Memorial Hospital (BMH) which led to Pat accepting the position of Assistant Director of the Mental Health Unit, and in the fall of 2000 she moved to Beaufort. Although she has now “graduated” from that position, she still covers psychiatric calls one weekend a month in the Emergency Room. “I am very impressed by the hospital’s dedication to the seriousness of mental health issues. BMH has ER on call care 24/7 available for mental health patients – and that’s very unusual. I am proud to have worked for
that hospital, proud of their integrity and compassion. It was a good place to wind down my career.”
One of Pat’s passions is gardening – she finds that working with her plants and her hands in the dirt is a very grounding and balancing time for her. Her gardens are amazingly beautiful – tended to with the same love, understanding, and eye for beauty as is evidenced in the rest of her endeavors. Another passion is photography, which started way back when. Pat recalls, “When you go back and look at your life and see that you always had a camera in your hand, it dawns on you that this is an integral part of who you are, how you see the world. When I was a senior in nursing school, I took a missionary trip to New Mexico and I fell in love with the Navajo, the country, the light. That was when I fell in love with my camera and became part of the way I started seeing life through my lens. Later on, when I worked in the postpartum unit in 1967, at a time when no one came into the rooms to see the moms, the babies were in a nursery behind a glass wall, and children weren’t even allowed in hospitals, I took Polaroid pictures of the moms with their babies – and they loved it. It was the only visual record they had.”
“One day,” Pat explains, “I had an epiphany about my photography: if you don’t give your gifts now, when are you going to give them?” Her photograph, “Fallen Trees on Hunting Island” was chosen by the Beaufort City Council for inclusion in the Open Land Trust 2006 calendar; another was chosen for a subsequent calendar. One was included in the 2010 Beaufort County Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. Other
exhibits include “Vanishing Landscapes of South Carolina”, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, MOJA Festival, the Masur Museum in Louisiana, yearly inclusion in the BMH art show, Beaufort Art Association’s Spring Shows and satellite galleries, the Beaufort Photography Club and The Red Piano Art Gallery. Remember she just does this for fun, which only serves to prove that she gives everything in which she is involved, her all. Her all, these days, is focused on the Threshold Singers, which is a chapter of the larger organization, the Threshold Choir International. Kate Munger started the Threshold Choir in California in 2000. In a recent interview with Liz Matsushita of sevenponds.com, Kate explains “The Threshold Choir … sing at the bedsides of people who are dying, people who are in a coma, newborns, children in hospitals, the grieving and incarcerated women.”
Kate Munger further explains the name, Threshold Choir. “The threshold of a building is the place that separates out from in. Also, the act of threshing separates the edible part of wheat or grain from the covering. So to me, this word ‘threshold’ gives special significance to transformation.” Having chosen healing as her life’s profession, Pat’s compassion and empathy are evident, as is the fact that she just cares, so much. “A piece inside of me is trying to make a difference and always has been; I once wrote, ‘If nobody believed they could make a difference, no difference would be made.’ I want to be in that place where I can be at the core of me, I believe we are one; I even have that on my license plate. We are only limited by our own vision in reflection to what we can create.” Clearly, Pat’s vision is not at all limited.
“In June of 2013, I went to Colorado to help with a fundraiser for some friends who were putting together a documentary about grief and I met the Colorado Springs Threshold Choir. I was inspired by them and felt that we had the talent and spirit to have Threshold Singers in Beaufort. I then felt Spirit ask me to do it and I thought, ‘How can I do it?’ Then I just said, ‘Yes.’ It will happen and unfold the way it happens and unfolds. Part ofwhat seems amazing to me, at my age, is our mortality and our legacy. What does it mean to say yes, not out of obligation, butout of spirit?
“I went to the Southeast Regional Gathering of the Threshold Choir in North Carolina in November of 2013. I went with no choir. I immersed myself in a weekend of listening and learning the songs and when I came back I started talking to people about it. “Our intention in going bedside is to go with an open heart, to be present, to use song as prayer. We can go anytime; all someone has to do is call me and I will find two, three or four
people to go wherever we are wanted. We will sit around the person and sing sacred lullabies for fifteen to twenty minutes. It can be any reason – a time of transition, a diagnosis, whatever and whenever it will bring comfort. There will be no more than four of us to share the sacred space of song and presence. If people have certain songs that are important to them, we will sing those. And people do have certain songs, our mother, for
instance, used to wake us up in the morning by singing. Our choir is open to anyone who would like to join us, inclusive of race and gender; right now we have eleven members.” An adjunct to this project is bringing nationally acclaimed singer, Heather Houston, to Beaufort on April 18, 2015 which is the Saturday before Earth Day. Pat has a vision, and is in the process of creating a concept for how Earth Day could debut in Beaufort.
Hand in hand with the caring Pat has for people, she is also involved with Compassionate Beaufort Communities, and hosted one of the events for Prosper Ndabishuriye, from Burundi Central Africa, when he was on a speaking tour here in May. Their own description reads: “The purpose of the Compassionate Beaufort Communities project is to invite all sectors of greater Beaufort to recognize the importance of compassion in all we do and to find every way possible to become a more compassionate people and community.”
Tireless, gracious, and ever present, Pat has the spirit and insight integral in forming the collective of Beaufort. “What an interesting process to reflect on one’s life…those things that matter, those dreams untouched, that breath of passion that leads you to the next step.”
Story by MARY ELLEN THOMPSON • Photography by SUSAN DELOACH
