Genevieve Patricia Holmes, 98, award-winning painter

GENEVIEVE Patricia Holmes endured some of the worst tragedies of recent American history that invaded her own life.

Raised during World War I and the Depression, her husband, a Marine pilot, was killed at Iwo Jima in World War II, and her only child, who survived combat in Vietnam, died of cancer at age 41.

"All that would be enough to ingrain a person with a perpetually sour approach to life," her nephew William Begley said in a eulogy at her funeral. "It didn't work that way for Aunt Pat.

"She was always smiling, she was very bright, she was funny, but we'd all agree that her most remarkable feature was that she was always completely engaged."

Genevieve Patricia Holmes, called Patricia or Pat by family and friends, an award-winning artist who exhibited widely in the Philadelphia region, died Jan. 18. She was 98 and lived in Rosemont.

"She loved people, she loved life, and it made her who she was," her nephew said.

Pat's artwork featured brilliant splashes of color, whether in her still lifes, landscapes or people disposed in various postures, including crowds at Penn's Landing. Her use of color brought her subjects into vivid life.

Speaking at the Rosemont Presbyterian Village, where Pat lived, her nephew said his aunt was "free to unleash her passions all over the Main Line.

"The paintings that didn't sell adorn this room and this community. Can you imagine the beauty of the ones that did sell?"

Begley said his aunt had a "highly advanced sense of social being."

"For as long as I can remember, Aunt Pat was a permanent part of our family," he said. "She never missed a party, a holiday or a celebration. She was exactly the same way here.

"She played bridge, she went to social gatherings and when she sat at a table with other residents, she sincerely cared about what was being said and who was saying it. She didn't get bored, and she didn't complain."

Pat won awards from such prestigious galleries as the Woodmere Art Museum, but her greatest satisfaction might have come from the paintings she donated to the Sunshine Foundation to help the organization, which fulfills the dreams of chronically or terminally ill children.

Genevieve Patricia Moore was born in North Philadelphia to John Edward Moore, a physician, and Genevieve LaFrance, a concert pianist.

She attended Friends Select School and the University of the Arts. She also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Pat married Stanley M. Holmes, an all-American football player at Franklin & Marshall, who became a Marine flier. He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Theater of World War II in February 1945.

Her son, Stanley M. Holmes Jr., was a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War, discharged as a captain. He died in January 1986.

During the war, Pat worked at the old Bell Telephone Co. and Curtis Publishing, among other jobs. Because of her artistic talent, she was called on to work on the blueprints for the battleship New Jersey, launched from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in 1942.

"Until she became frail in her final years, she never turned down a chance to go to the theater, the Academy of Music, the movies, our house for dinner - you name it," her nephew said.

Pat was a member of the board of the Wayne Art Center, and belonged to a number of watercolor societies.

Services: Were private.