Patricia LaVigne's Obituary
Well-known Fort Myers artist Patricia LaVigne died on December 30, 2018. She was just three months shy of her 93rd birthday, and seven years shy of her goal of living to be 100.As a mother of six, grandmother of 13 and great grandmother of 15, Pat gave and received an abundance of love. In 2016, on her 90th birthday, more than 50 family members and close family friends gathered from all over the country to celebrate her life. Today, although her family grieves, the memories of her long life are happy ones.A 60-year resident of Fort Myers, Pat was born in Boston, Mass., on March 24, 1926, to Florence Evelyn Park Leland and Roger Maxwell Leland. The Leland family were among America’s earliest settlers, arriving in the early 1600’s and founding the town of Sherborn, Mass. The Parks emigrated from Scotland in the 1800s and operated a number of woolen mills in the Northeast.Pat married young, as did so many men and women in the early days of World War II. Before she was 30, she and her first husband, Frederick N. Eng, had given birth to six children.In the early ‘50s, they built a cottage on the beach in Chatham, Mass., where they were summer residents for more than 25 years. In 1958, the family packed up and left snowy New England for Fort Myers, but continued to make the annual summer trek to Chatham, where some of the family’s happiest memories were formed.Pat and Fred divorced in 1975, and both had long and happy second marriages. They remained friends and shared many years of family gatherings in Fort Myers as their children grew up and had families of their own.Pat and her second husband, Ralph J. LaVigne traveled widely, where places like Greece, Italy and Morocco provided artistic inspiration.An accomplished artist, Pat studied at the DeCordova and Dana Museum School in Lincoln, Mass., and with well-known artists Donald Stoltenberg and Victor Candell, director of the Provincetown, Mass., Workshop. She won numerous awards and accolades over the years, including from the Art Council of Southwest Florida, the Hyannis Art Show and Longboat Art Center, Longboat Key.In 2006, The Cape Coral Arts Studio held a one-woman show featuring a 60-year retrospective of her work. In a Fort Myers News-Press article on the show, well-known art critic Maureen Bashaw wrote of her works: “They’re impressions of memories of Southwest Florida beaches and visits to Europe with her late husband Ralph, of outings through woods and city streets with her children, of mangrove swamps, of the appearance of a rainbow in the sky after a storm, of shrimp boats at sunset.”Well into her ninth decade, Pat still found joy in creating her collages, despite declining eyesight and limited physical ability.Pat’s parents, her sister Jean Leland Gauld, her first husband Frederick N. Eng, and her second husband Ralph J. LaVigne preceded her in death. She leaves behind her six children, Richard Leland Eng (Sharon Williams, North Port), Karen Eng Schaffner (John, Amelia Island), Kristen Eng Ellington (William Ross, Tallahassee), Frederick Roger Eng (Fort Myers), Jeffrey Nils Eng (Vicki Burchfield, Brooksville), Susan Eng Garvin (Jeffrey, Ft. Myers), and stepson Steve LaVigne (Laxmi, San Diego). She also leaves 13 grandchildren: Steve Eng (Amber, Winston-Salem, NC), Brian Schaffner (Mia Costa, Grantham, NH), Laura Kelly (Morris, Peachtree City, GA), Allan Goldstein (Ellen, South Salem, NY), Keith Ellington (Tallahassee), Scott Ellington (Tallahassee), Nick Eng (Hillary, Fort Myers), Kristen Cullum (Aaron, Fort Myers), Matthew Eng (Justine, Spring Hill), Liesl Mishoe (Andrew, Kennesaw, GA), Meagan Eng (Tampa), Leland Garvin (Fort Myers) and Daryl Peters (Fort Myers). She is also survived by 15 great grandchildren, and nieces and nephews.Contributions in her memory may be made to Hope Hospice.
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