The Rev. Argola Haynes, or Golie, as her friends and family called her, was born in San Bernardino in 1940 because her mother, Ruth, said no. Her father, the Rev. T.A. Patterson, an AME minister who had served all over the country, got orders to pack up in the Inland Empire to take his family to a new cure in Independence, Kansas. But Ruth loved California, so the family stayed put.
Golie had 11 siblings in all, including Alma, a beloved lector at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, and Richard, a retired AME-turned-Methodist pastor and the youngest sibling. In his moving eulogy at Golie’s celebration of life at All Saints last Friday, where I presided, Richard said he was glad his parents kept going until they got to him. Alma read out her sister’s favorite hymn lyrics: “May the work I’ve done speak for me!…May the life I live speak for me.”
And surely it does. For 30 years a beloved elementary school teacher in Pasadena, Golie discerned the priesthood as her second vocation. Ordained in 1999, she served St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Pasadena, St Bede’s Episcopal Church in Mar Vista, Advent in Los Angeles, and Christ the Good Shepherd in Leimert Park. Each congregation was represented at Friday’s service. She’s shown here as her St. Barnabas family celebrated their centennial two years ago.
At her memorial, perhaps 30 extended Patterson family members were present, including Tina and BJ, her daughter and granddaughter, and cousins who grew up as though they were sisters in a family comprising a dense network of mutual support.
Some had shared generously as I prepared my homily. Anna, Golie’s next eldest sibling, told me she was the Pollyanna, so Golie was naturally going to be the opposite. Those who knew her around the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are stories about her staying behind at school without her mother’s permission to go to a dance and getting caught smoking a cigar in the girls’ restroom. Plain spoken, good-humored, and impatient with injustice and unkindness, Golie glowed with a light we had better not forget. Hers was surely a voice for these times.
