Most of her students at the time did not know this, but Pat was actually a lawyer as well as a high school teacher. Her day often consisted of teaching at IHS until noon, and then practicing law for the rest of the day. Because of her unique background in the law, she was well known at Interlake over the years for teaching social studies, civil liberties, English, and journalism. She also advised many, many clubs over the years, and pretty much ran the Soothsayer newspaper, as well as the yearbook. By the mid-‘80s, Interlake yearbooks were often just referred to as “Pat O’Hanley Productions.”
Pat graduated from high school at 16, and had earned her B.A. and Master’s by the age of 22. She started teaching high school in 1960, and wound up at Interlake starting in 1972. She became the advisor of the Soothsayer and the yearbook a year later, and she stayed there in that position for nearly twenty-five years. And she was always very passionate about the law, often taking her civil liberties classes into the courtroom to see the law in action, and also chaperoning a yearly trip to Washington D.C., so IHS students could witness their government.
Pat was notoriously private both in and out of the classroom, but she was always willing to fight publicly for things she believed in. She was “small in stature, but big in personality,” according to her friends. She traveled to Louisville, Kentucky, to help register Black voters during the civil rights movement. She was also one of the first teachers to cover Japanese internment in Washington State, bringing a local resident into her classroom whose family had been impacted by the practice. She was also well known in Western Washington for being a champion of animals.
Pat’s love for animals eventually culminated in her founding “Pat O’Hanley Dog Rescue” in Carnation, but her work with helping animals started long before that. Beginning in the 1960s, on just a high school teacher’s salary, Pat began investing in real estate throughout the state. Her intentions for the properties were never secret: she wanted to donate the proceeds from the sales to animal welfare organizations. And donate she did, donating thousands upon thousands of dollars to help Washington State’s animals over the years. Pat’s mantra about her real estate holdings was always the same. Although property values in the Seattle area skyrocketed, she would always tell people, “I’m not selling. This is for the animals.”
Sadly, Pat passed away on October 17, 2017. In her honor, and because of her generosity over the years, several pet rescue organizations in Washington State publicly posted tributes to her.
Her obituary can be found here.
