Patricia A. Arsenault

Arsenault, Patricia Anne, 86, of St. Petersburg, died Friday, November 2, 2012, at the Westminster Suncoast Health Center, following a long illness. She was born, Patricia Anne Ostby in Hyannis, Massachusetts, on September 25, 1926. Along with her twin sister, Helen Weekes Ostby Bouvier, she was the child of Gothard Norman Ostby, a Norwegian-born professional photographer and World War I Army veteran, and Marjorie Burnham Weekes Ostby, a native of Lynn, MA. She spent her childhood in Harwichport, MA, on Cape Cod, where her parents owned and operated the Ostby Photo Service. In addition to her twin sister Helen, she had an older brother, Gothard Norman Ostby, Jr., and an older half-sister, Dorothy Carolyn Eldridge Fennell. Educated in the Harwich public schools, she graduated from Harwich High School in 1944. A fun-loving and gregarious student who worked as a movie usher on weekends, she was voted "Most Attractive Girl" by her senior classmates. Several years earlier, in 1936, her father had invited a 14-year-old fatherless French Canadian boy, Oscar Arsenault, from Cormierville, New Brunswick, to live with their family while he attended high school. On September 23, 1944, two days before her 18th-birthday, she married Oscar at the home of her aunt, Carolyn Helms, in Glendale, California. A sailor attached to a US Navy reconnaissance squadron stationed in the Pacific theater, her young husband spent the remainder of the war taking high-altitude photographs from a B-24 bomber. Reunited in late 1945, Pat and Oz, as they were known to their friends, settled in Harwich after his discharge from the Navy in early 1946. Following the death of Pat's father later that year, the young couple worked alongside Pat's widowed mother in an effort to sustain the Ostby Photo Service. In January 1948, they became the parents of a son, Raymond Ostby, named for Oz's younger brother Ray, a Marine killed at Iwo Jima in March 1945. Pat and Oz remained in Harwich until the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, when Oz, a member of the Naval Reserve, was recalled to active duty. For the next twenty years, Pat lived as a Navy wife and homemaker, caring for her son and daughter Pamela (born in 1953), often in the absence of her seafaring husband, who served two long tours aboard the aircraft carriers Hornet and Independence. The Navy life took her to Norfolk and Atlantic, VA, Washington, DC, and Pensacola and Jacksonville, FL, with frequent extended stays on Cape Cod during her husband's shipboard assignments. Along the way she worked as a telephone operator for Bell Telephone and a switchboard operator for Sears Roebuck, but her main focus was always her husband and children, whom she nurtured with loving affection. Pat and Oz moved their family to Jacksonville in 1963, and remained there following Oz's retirement from the Navy as a Lieutenant Commander in 1971. After several years of involvement with MCS, a small microfilm company, Oz--with Pat's help --went on to become one of northeast Florida's most popular wedding photographers. Both before and after their retirement from the photography business in 2000, Pat developed a passion for ceramics and various arts and crafts, which she often lavished on her friends and family. In September 2006, after more than four decades in Jacksonville, Pat and Oz relocated to St. Petersburg to be nearer to their children and grandchildren. After Oz's death in June 2007, Pat suffered failing health and became bedridden, ultimately succumbing to a series of strokes. She is survived by her twin sister, Helen Bouvier of East Harwich, MA; her son and daughter-in-law, Dr. Raymond O. and Kathleen H. Arsenault of St. Petersburg; her daughter and son-in-law, Pamela and Wil Ward of Riverview, FL; two granddaughters, Anne Hardee Arsenault of St. Petersburg, and Dr. Amelia Hardee Arsenault, and her husband Dr. Shawn Powers of Atlanta, GA; sisters-in-law, Bertha Rowland of Fernandina Beach, FL, and Doris Gordon of San Diego, CA; brother-in-law, Gerald Arsenault of Sontana, CA; and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins. The family asks that, in lieu of flowers, memorial contributions be sent to Westminster Retirement Communities Foundation, Westminster Suncoast, 1095 Pinellas Point Drive South, St. Petersburg, FL 33705. Pat will be interred alongside her beloved husband at the National Cemetery in Bourne, MA. A memorial service will be held in Harwich, MA, sometime in early 2013.