Patricia "Patsy" Turner

Feb 14, 1948 -

Sep 30, 2024

Patricia "Patsy" Turner, 76, of Palmer, Alaska, passed away peacefully at Providence Horizon House after a loving bath given by Hospice of Anchorage. Patsy was a force in her entire life from her Valentine's Day birth in 1948. She loved adventures, gardening, spending time with family and friends. Her children, Jennifer Joy Turner and Jeffrey Jay Turner, had more adventures growing up with Patsy and her husband Mike than most people experience in a lifetime. Patsy also had a beloved grandson Luke Meiwes, who she dearly enjoyed teaching and spending time with until her very last day.

Patsy was a talented social worker working during welfare to work reform and worked with many youths to finish high school in conjunction with Peter Burchell, which would later become a cornerstone for alternative high school programs. She touched the lives of many clients with her co-workers Sue Gibbs and Karen Kowalski. Patsy also worked at the Women's Resource Center and for Fish and Game. Her time at Fish and Game included rescuing baby black bears back to her apartment with her infant daughter in tow, as no facilities existed to hold such animals.

Patsy loved her children, family and family-by-choice dearly and moved with many friends from Anchorage to the Matanuska Susitna Valley, where they all built homes and shared in many fishing and camping adventures, Yukon River floats, get-togethers and Patsy was the ultimate host with her husband Mike. The coffee pot was always on at Patsy's and she would feed you, listen and delighted in keeping up with friends during impromptu visits.

Patsy had a green thumb that went all the way to her elbow and enjoyed the peaceful quiet of the home she and her husband built beginning in summer 1975. She resided in this home until weeks before her passing.

She was preceded in death by her husband Mike; and survived by her children; grandson; sisters, Marty Williams and Jane Baldwin; nieces and nephews, Katie Baldwin Johnson, Mike Baldwin, Jason Malone and Jody Williams Di-Patri; grandnieces and grandnephews, Maddie and Riley Johnson, Taylor, Riley and Paige Malone; sister-in-law, Vicki Malone; and claimed favorite relative, Selena Page Malone. She is also survived by the families of choice Mahler, Arneson, Busha, Janecek, Bettine-Butchers, Romig, Dockie Lewis, Tim Sullivan, Swan, Maloney, Cogdell, Thorton, Stanfield and many other families, as Patsy and Mike made friends and adventures everywhere they went, from their first prom at West High School to the end of their lives.

Memorial contributions may be made to Trinity Lutheran Church facilitated in partnership with the family to donate a service to the church's community programs for middle, elementary, preschool, behavioral and recreational programs within the Matanuska Susitna Borough. This donation would have meaning to Patsy as a social worker and problem solver.