Patricia Paul Olive, 75

Patricia Paul Olive died suddenly on August 20. She suffered a severe brain hemorrhage while enjoying her daily swim in North Bay, off Osterville on Cape Cod.

Patsy, as she was widely known, was born in New York City as part of the postwar baby boom generation. Her father, James Albert Paul, an Episcopal clergyman, was rector of Holy Trinity Church on the Upper East Side until his premature death in his 50s, so her earliest memories were of the rectory where she and her family lived.

After her father’s death, she and her mother, Jean Lithgow Paul, lived for many years on Gracie Square overlooking the East River. Patsy attended Brick Church Nursery School and The Chapin School, then St. Timothy’s School in Stevenson, Maryland. She graduated from Smith College in 1973.

Patsy’s professional career included work as an event planner at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston right out of college when she lived in Cambridge. Later, she returned to New York and took a job with the asset management firm Fischer, Francis, Trees & Watts.

In 1980, she married John (Jack) Olive in New York City, and together they raised their daughter Elizabeth in Carnegie Hill, though she continued to spend summers in Osterville, where she and her family had begun going in the 1950s when her father was summer rector at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.

In 2021, Patsy and Jack sold their Carnegie Hill apartment and relocated to Newbury Court, a continuing care facility in Acton, where they could be near their daughter Elizabeth and her family.

Patsy was happiest when doing her favorite things with the people she loved — tennis and bridge with good friends, museums and lectures with Jack, walks and swims with Elizabeth, and eating ice cream and shopping with Emi. She was an exceptional mother and grandmother, to whom the instinct for nurture came naturally.

Patsy leaves her husband of 46 years; her daughter Elizabeth and husband Cody Bradford and their daughter Emilia; and two brothers James and Douglas Paul and their families. A memorial service will be held at Trinity Episcopal Church in Acton at 10 a.m. on September 18.

Notes of comfort may be left for the family at chapmanfuneral.com.