Janet Pat Brown MacLean’s life flame left us to be with her lifelong love’s, Gordon MacLean on October 21, 2026. She stayed 14 more trips around the sun, almost to the hour of his departure. She was 86. She lived life so fully and completely that her mind was unable to keep processing it all to the end.
Pat and Gordon met when they were in first grade in Trussville, Alabama. Together, they exemplified a true, lifelong partnership. In 1957 they eloped to Mississippi and moved to Florence, Alabama where they had five children and received degrees from Florence State Teachers College.
We will never know how many lives she touched during her 41-year teaching career. She cared about her kids, all of them and pushed in whatever way that let them know and would help each one as much as she could. Her career included teaching at Our Lady of the Shoals Catholic school and the remainder of her teaching career at Northside Elementary in Tuscumbia.
Pat loved playing cards. Her father returned from WWII with polio. Unable to hold his cards, Pat at a very young age would hold them for him. Her tenacity, already unable to be thwarted would change the card choice he would request, because hers was the better choice, of course. There are an unfathomable number of hours playing cards with family and friends any and everywhere she would go. She and Gordon were lifetime members of the Contract Bridge Association. Both obtaining Silver Life Masters in 1973.
Pat was preceded in death by her spouse, Gordon, her son, Michael Raymond MacLean, of Florence, Alabama. Her brother, Frederick Allen Brown, Jr., of Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents were Sybil Bulloch and Allen Brown of Trussville, Alabama.
She is survived by her three daughters, one son, two grandsons and two great-grandsons. Toni Leigh MacLean and Kevin R. Hawthorne, Vicky Marie MacLean and Joyce Williams, Chris, Alex and Oliver Everhart. Cameron Jude and his mom Karman Haggenmaker. Mack, Sharon, and Noah Wong MacLean. Patty and Rob Walls.
