Remembering Patricia Picha
Obituary for Patricia (Patti) Louise Picha
September 20, 1954 – October 5, 2025
By Barry Whitehill
Photo courtesy of Barry Whitehall
Patti flying in a plane with one of her old friends.
Patti Picha was born in Puyallup, Washington to Warren and Jean (Grimme) Picha in 1954, the youngest of four children raised on the family berry/rhubarb farm near Puyallup. Before she was old enough to work in the fields with her family, Patti often spent her days entertaining herself, within eyesight, in the many mud puddles. Farm life honed Patti’s strong work ethic, and time spent outdoors developed and nurtured her love for wild places.
Patti has followed in the footsteps of her paternal grandfather, Mike Picha, in many ways. He came to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush to help Puyallup farmer friends, the Richters, with their store in Skagway. This included drumming up customers when ships arrived with a new batch of greenhorns and protecting the store safe at night by sleeping next to it. He also tried his hand at mining near Dawson City. Mike eventually returned to Puyallup with funds to support his own farming efforts, plus a gold nugget that Patti and her sisters shared wearing as a pendant.
After graduating from Puyallup High School, Patti earned an undergraduate recreation degree from Central Washington University and a graduate degree in student personnel administration from Western Washington University. During her college summers, she worked with teenagers in the U.S. Forest Service-sponsored Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) programs in Washington State. In 1977, while assisting with a pilot year-round residential YCC program at the Cispus Environmental Center near Randle, WA, she met her future husband, Barry Whitehill.
Careerwise, Patti first spent a couple years at Centralia Community College as student activities director, followed by 11 years at Whitman College as Coordinator of Outdoor Programs. There were a couple of “missing years” as she put it, in Kearney, Nebraska outside of higher education but this ultimately led to a position as Director of the Student Union Building at Mesa State University (Colorado Mesa University) for seven years.
Photo courtesy of Barry Whitehall
Like her grandfather before her, in 2001 Patti offered to quit her job at Mesa State, sell her home in Grand Junction, and move to Alaska to help her friend Barry raise his young sons, Callison and Kai, after the death of Barry's wife Betsy. For someone who never pictured herself as a mother, this proposal was monumental. Her decision led to wrestling, basketball, soccer, sleep-over, and PTA commitments. It also facilitated Patti’s return to college careers, along with marrying Barry in 2007. Patti eventually became the Director of Career Services at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), retiring from that position in 2014. Almost immediately, she was rehired as an adjunct academic advisor at the UAF Community & Technical College. Patti continued working with students until a few months before her passing.
With the exodus of kid activities, Patti branched out to regular donations of her coveted O-blood to the Fairbanks Community Blood Bank; volunteering weekly at the Stone Soup Cafe; floating numerous remote rivers in Alaska, the Lower 48, Finland, and Latvia (her favorite was the Ivishak River within Arctic National Wildlife Refuge); dip netting sockeyes on the Kenai with her good friend Doug Downs; hosting a variety of friends, family, and travelers to Alaska at the home she shared with Barry; and catering to Tink, an aging, anxiety-ridden German wire-haired pointer hunting dog that Patti often referred to as her "albatross.”
Like her grandfather Mike, and his daughter Verle (her aunt), Patti succumbed to pancreatic cancer. She is survived by her husband Barry Whitehill of Fairbanks; son Callison of Brighton, UT; son Kai (Greer) of Davenport, IA; her sister Linda (Larry Sharpe) of Ellensburg, WA; brother David (Kay) of Colfax, NC; and sister Beth (Frank Hesketh) of Olympia, WA.
Special thanks to the myriad of family and friends who hosted Patti as she received chemotherapy at Virginia Mason Hospital in Seattle since October 2023; all the neighbors who provided food, overflow rooms for visitors, and snow removal; Dr. Picozzi’s pancreatic cancer team at Virginia Mason; and the Foundation Health Partners Hospice Services in Fairbanks.
Donations in Patti Picha’s honor can be made to Bread Line, Inc. at breadlineak.org to support the Stone Soup Cafe and help fight hunger in Fairbanks or to Backcountry Hunters and Anglers at www.backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/donate.
A celebration of her adventurous life will be held Monday, October 20, 2025, starting at 5 p.m. at Gather, 714 3rd Avenue in Downtown Fairbanks. Everyone is welcome to bring and share potluck dishes, nonalcoholic drinks, and their special stories and memories of Patti.