General Notes

Patricia Violet Craven
April 4, 1932 - July 19, 2020

Today I would like to give you a bit of Pat's family's history. Pat's parents came from England and Scotland. Pat's father John Charles Craven (Jack) was a letterpress printer and her mother Mary Aird Haining was a typist. In 1928 Jack received a call to India to work at the Adventist publishing house, the Oriental Watchmen. It was during this time in 1932 Pat was born in Poona, India. She was 4 weeks late and about 12 lbs, but very healthy.

Pat lived in India for about 4 years and in 1936 the family returned to England for her education. Her father Jack took a positon at the Stanborough Press. Under his management the Stanborough Press came to the height of its prosperity not seen before or since. Pat's mother Mary took a position as a typist at the Watford factory that produced Blenheim bombers. In England they lived through the WWII years and there are many entertaining stories I was told as a youngster. War through the eyes of a child can be a game of hiding under the desks in school when the doodle bug bombs could be heard in the air.

Pat was blessed with parents that did not communicate their fears to her. The family had purchased a Morrison Shelter (steel table that would allow two or three people to hide under and it would hold the ceiling off the people if the house was bombed). There were several nights Pat and her brother had to sleep downstairs next to the Morison Shelter. Mary, Pat's mother, had a mild claustrophobia and refused to come down from her bedroom upstairs. "If a bomb comes," she said, "I want to sail out on top."

Throughout all that Pat finished her education and in 1949 her father got a call to Australia to be the general manager of the Signs Publishing Company in Warburton, Victoria, Australia. So Pat, Mary, and Pat's brother, John Boyd Craven, set sail from Plymouth to New York on the French liner De Grasse then crossed the US by train to San Pedro then on to Australia on the Swedish freighter called the Narrandera. This voyage took three weeks and arrived at the port of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. During their stay in Australia Jack, Pat's father, was in the midst of improving the efficient flow of jobs through the factory and of ordering new equipment when he grew ill and died in 1951. Since they had not set down any roots in Australia they decided to return to California where most of Pat's mother's relatives live.

In Glendale, California, following the migrations of her parents, Pat became a book keeper and secretary for the Southern California Conference and Pacific Union Conference offices for 30 years. I fondly remember hiking the hills of Griffith Park with her dogs every Sunday or going on an excursion to the beach. On July 19, 2020 she passed quietly in her sleep. Pat will be greatly missed.

— Biography by Dawn Rabello

  Burial Notes

Forest Lawn - Glendale

  Recorded Events in Her Life

• She had a residence in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles County, California, USA.

• Nickname: Pat.

• She worked as a secretarial typist and bookkeeper.