Patricia Leskovar

1933 - 2025

Patricia (Pat) Leskovar was born on May 21, 1933, in Helena, Montana, the third daughter and fourth child born to Aila and Peter Thompson. Her mother was the daughter of Welsh immigrants. Her father immigrated from Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland). Pat was baptized into the Catholic Church in St. Helena's Cathedral. This was during the Great Depression. A couple years later, the mines reopened in Butte, Montana, and Peter and Aila moved the family back to Butte. Peter resumed working in the copper mines. He was killed in a mining accident when Pat was four years old. Her mother, a young widow, raised Pat and her four siblings by herself.

Pat attended St. Ann's Grade School and Girls Central. She was a remarkably gifted student. She attended Seattle University for one year and then Carroll College in Helena, one of only seven women who were not in the nursing program. She told the president of the college, Father Kavanagh, that she would have to find a job in order to pay the tuition. He said, "We will find you a job." That job was working for him as his secretary. She graduated with a degree in social sciences (economics, political science, history) and a minor in philosophy.

She started working when still in grade school, cleaning a beauty salon owned by a friend of her mother. She worked a variety of jobs through high school and college: on a pie line in Seattle, in the lab at St. James Hospital, in the pharmacy at St. James, as a hostess at the restaurant at the Finlen Hotel, as a "savage" in Yellowstone Park. She quit Carroll temporarily when she ran out of money. During that time, she worked as an airline stewardess for Treasure State Airlines ferrying workers to the oil fields of Montana and North Dakota. That job ended when the plane crashed in a farmer's field outside of Glendive. Surviving a plane crash did not deter Pat's love for travel.

After she graduated from college, she taught high school to ranch kids in Lima, Montana. She lived with the head of the school board's family. She went back to Butte every weekend and then was hired to teach at the new junior high school in Butte. Two of the teachers were a married couple, Don and Patty Orlich. They invited Pat to go skiing with them in West Yellowstone. They also invited Don's childhood friend Ted Leskovar.

Seven months later, Pat and Ted married at St. Ann's Church in Butte. They had two children, Christy and Jeff. In 1968, the opportunity arose to take over a bankrupt Lincoln Mercury dealership in Kennewick, WA, and off they went.

Pat worked in the office at the car dealership. She was head of the Altar Society and on the finance committee at St. Joseph's Church in Kennewick. She and Ted loved to travel and socialize with their wide circle of friends.

Pat outlived her husband, Ted, and her parents and her siblings. She passed away quietly at home in her own bed on September 8, 2025. She is survived by her children, Jeff and Christy, her son-in-law Ron Ishida, and many nieces and nephews and cousins.