Patricia Lee “Patty” Ankrum passed away on February 9, 2025 at her home in Mount Vernon after a lengthy bout with oral cancer. By her side were her sister Peggy and her dear friend Dixie Collins.
She was born to Homer and Ethel Ankrum on August 6, 1954 in Wurzburg, Germany while her father was serving in the U.S. Army. She grew up in Webster City, Iowa, graduating from Webster City High School in 1972. She attended Webster City Community College and the University of Northern Iowa before graduating from Loras College in Dubuque with a degree in parish ministry. She served as director of religious education at St. Patrick’s Church in Anamosa and taught music in several churches in eastern Iowa.
She was a professional musician and accomplished rhythm guitar player, starting in 1980 as a member of the Waubeek Trackers and later as a member of Black Sheep, Holy Catz, and Lilywren. She recorded four albums, “Strong Again” with Kris Gannon, “The Cat Came Back” with the Waubeek Trackers, and “A Sheep at the Wheel” and “Deep Sheep” with Black Sheep.
From 1988 to 2010, she was the video operations coordinator at the University of Iowa College of Law. Always committed to peace and social justice, she participated in the 1986 Great Peace March across the U.S. and she visited the Soviet Union in 1987 and 1988 to be part of the American Soviet Walk.
Patty took up storm chasing about 2000 and traveled widely in the central plains following the paths of twisters. In 2014, she co-founded Monarchs of Eastern Iowa in order to help preserve the rapidly dwindling population of the butterflies. She connected with the Monarch Trust, a national organization with the same goals and made two trips to central Mexico where the species overwinters after a 2000-mile journey from the Midwest.
In 2014, she took up watercolor painting which offered her another outlet for her boundless creativity. While never interested in sports or athletics, during the last two years of her life she became an avid Caitlin Clark and women’s basketball fan and traveled to Indianapolis with her sister Peggy to watch an Indiana Fever game despite her rapidly weakening physical condition. It was the only live sporting event she ever attended.
She was preceded in death by her parents and siblings Dennis (Sharon), Mary Adams, Tommy and Janet Lovelace, and beloved brother-in-law Marcus Fuhrman. She is survived by her sister Peggy Fuhrman, nieces Amanda Campbell and Becky Williams-Didato (Barry), nephews Wesley Fuhrman (Alena), Carl Ankrum (Yolonda), Brad Williams and Jordan Lovelace, as well as great-nephews Harvey, and Loudon Fuhrman and Max Coyote Campbell, and great-niece Sophia Didato. She is also survived by her dear friend and soulmate Dixie Collins, to whom she referred as her “sister from another mother” and with whom she shared 45 years of adventures, and Dixie’s husband Steve Maravetz.
In July 2019, she participated in a tour of local prairies sponsored by the Indian Creek Nature Center. During that tour, she visited the prairie established by Paul Morf and during which time she made the powerful connection between Iowa’s wildflower prairies and monarch butterfly habitat. As she neared the end of her life, Patty worked with Morf, an attorney who serves on the board of the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation to establish and endow the Patty Ankrum Prairie Trust. The trust will purchase an appropriate tract of land near Mount Vernon, which will be reverted to natural Iowa prairie in perpetuity.
The trust agreement states that any ambiguity interpreting her final wishes should be resolved by referring to the poem “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Memorials should be directed to the Ankrum Prairie Fund at the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation.