Patricia B. Cote, 82; taught history in the Natick schools

PATRICIA B. COTE

Friends of Patricia B. Cote had a favorite quip about the retired Natick schools history teacher: "Before there was Google, there was Pat."

From the Latin names for hundreds of lilies she planted to the details of the Crusades, Dr. Cote was a lively 5-foot-1 walking database of knowledge with a desire to help others.

She died July 11 of an unidentified cause after she was found not breathing at the Village of a Thousand Pines condominium complex in Ashland, where she had lived for the last decade. She was 82.

"She was always there to help everyone," said David J. Levy, the property manager of the complex, where Dr. Cote was a trustee and head of the grounds committee.

For 29 years, Dr. Cote taught history to Natick students in middle and high schools. She specialized in Advanced Placement European history and also served as a superviser of teacher training at Framingham State College.

"She taught me to love history, how to bake a scone, and to appreciate the joy of a beautiful garden," said former student Janet Doherty Magennis of Bellevue, Wash. "I will never forget her."

As a young girl living in upstate New York and later in Michigan, she always dreamed of teaching, relatives and colleagues said.

She told friends that her father, William Vicinus, a construction engineer, did not view teaching as a viable career for a young woman and would not pay for her schooling. But he did send her to nursing school, and she graduated from Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in 1946.

"There was a great need for nurses in the 1940s, but she always wanted to be a teacher," said her sister Martha of Boston.

During her nursing career, she worked at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Children's Hospital in Boston, and the former Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

With a first marriage and a nursing stint in Berlin behind her, she pursued a teaching career in the 1960s. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1962 from Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education and a master's degree in 1963. She earned a doctorate in education from Harvard in 1976.

While earning her undergraduate degree at Harvard, she met and married Frank R. Cote, who became a labor-relations lawyer. They had been married 21 years when he died of heart failure in 1984.

The couple lived most of their lives in Sherborn, where Dr. Cote kept a large garden and enjoyed canning tomatoes.

She loved poodles and named her dogs over the years after historical and literary figures: There was Alexander the Great, King Philip the Wampanoag, Nicholas Nickleby, and Henri IV, who is still alive.

"She was a tiny, slight person, but an enormous bundle of energy," said her daughter Catherine of Watertown. "She could read a book and absorb information faster than anyone I know."

When she retired and moved into a condo, Dr. Cote brought along her love of gardening. She organized volunteers to transform the 232-unit property with banks of lilies and grasses.

"I'm not old; I was just born a long time ago," she would say, according to Levy.

In 2005, the Community Associations Institute named her the "outstanding condo owner of New England."

Levy got used to seeing Dr. Cote digging in the dirt outside his offices. "I've got a maintenance division, and there she is weeding my garden," he recalled.

Dr. Cote took a sincere interest in most everyone she met, her friends and family said. "She was the good Samaritan," Levy said.

When she attended a Passover Seder at Levy's home, Dr. Cote, who was Christian, asked to take home the Jewish text that instructs the meal. "She said, 'I want to be more prepared for next year,' " he recalled.

She enjoyed traveling and had visited every continent. Joan Karcher, her friend and close companion for two decades, recounted accompanying her on safari in Africa and on trips to Norway, Sweden, Ireland, and England.

She embraced technology and enjoyed compiling her trip photos into DVDs to share with others, Karcher said.

"She helped everybody," Karcher said. "If she didn't know, she would find out."

In addition to her sister and daughter, Dr. Cote leaves two other daughters, Susan of New Mexico and Claire Drinan of Belmont, and another sister, Carolyn Mille of Santa Cruz, Calif.

A memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow at St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church in Dover. Burial next to her husband's grave in Berlin, Vt., is planned for a later date.