Former first lady Patricia Holshouser, 67, dies

Patricia Holshouser, who went from the glamour of being North Carolina's first lady to a career as a nurse who helped care for the dying, died Wednesday night at her home in Southern Pines.

Holshouser, 67, died after several years of battling cancer.

Holshouser became first lady at the age of 33, after her husband, Jim Holshouser, was elected in 1972 as North Carolina's first Republican governor of the 20th century.

During her four years as first lady, Holshouser accompanied her husband on a trade mission to Russia, presided over the renovation of the Executive Mansion and worked late at night helping sew drapes for the mansion.

She also took nursing courses at Wake Technical Community College and later earned an advanced nursing degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. Holshouser, the daughter of a Baptist minister, went on to head the Scotland County Hospice program.

"She had a servant's heart," said her daughter, Ginny Mills, 43, who along with her husband is a Presbyterian missionary in southern Mexico. "Her lifelong passion for nursing was her true gift. There were so many who benefited from that -- from the hospice patients to my dad. Those instincts and passions were there for a lifetime."

The political wife

Few people thought Patricia Hollingsworth was a future first lady when, in 1961, she married a boyish-looking Boone lawyer. But she gamely helped her husband as he rose in politics as a legislator and then in his election as governor at age 38 in a major upset. The couple took out a second mortgage on their house to help finance the campaign.

"We used her as if she was a candidate," said Gene Anderson, a former top Holshouser political adviser. "She had her own schedule. We had hundreds and hundreds of coffees where ladies would come in and meet her. She worked as hard as he did, which was awfully hard."

The couple so rarely saw each other during the campaign that they once spent the night in different hotels in the same city without realizing their paths had crossed, said Phil Kirk, who was Holshouser's chief of staff.

Her husband, who had kidney disease, was told by his physician that a campaign and term as governor would shorten his life, Anderson said. But that did not deter the Holshousers, who shared a Presbyterian desire to serve.

A turn to nursing

Friends say one reason Holshouser went into nursing was to help her husband, who had dialysis treatment and then a kidney transplant after being governor.

She traveled to Russia, London and Paris on a trade mission with her husband and was President Gerald Ford's dinner partner at the White House. She broke into tears when her husband was booed on the floor at the 1976 state Republican Convention by delegates supporting Ronald Reagan. Her husband was Ford's Southern chairman.

Among her projects was renovating the mansion.

"I don't mean to be hard to get along with," she told a legislative committee, "but it would be nice to be able to open the windows."

The Holshousers moved into a private residence for nine months during the work. To save money and meet a deadline, Holshouser and her staff holed up for two weeks in a state office building sewing curtains.

"There was a lot of her she put in the mansion," said Carolyn Peck, a former aide to the first lady. "It was a labor of love."

After the governorship, the Holshousers moved to Southern Pines and she began a career in nursing. She was patient care coordinator and a hospice and palliative nurse with Hospice of Scotland County.

"She was outgoing, very nice and very intelligent," said George Little, a friend of the Holshousers. "She liked athletics, liked socializing, liked parties and was very active in the church."

About two years ago, she was diagnosed with lung cancer.

She was at her husband's side, in a wheelchair, when he received the prestigious North Carolina Award in Durham last month.

"She is one of the toughest ladies I know," Anderson said. "She was told a couple of years ago she had only a couple of months to live. She really, really fought it hard."

The service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Brownson Memorial Presbyterian Church. A visitation will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. at the church's Fellowship Hall.