She has been hailed as a patron, a benefactor, a grand dame and, according to a 1995 article, an “animated and always glowing arts maven.”
She was celebrated in a 2024 Virginia General Assembly resolution declaring her “a distinguished member of the Richmond community who has cemented her legacy as a philanthropist and historical preservationist.”
But 96-year-old Patsy Pettus describes herself quite differently.
“I call myself a party girl,” she says, a twinkle in her eye. “I enjoy going to all the events. I get out as much as I can. And at my age, I get out right much.”
The staff at Westminster Canterbury Richmond, the retirement community where Patsy lives, can attest to that. After a stroke limited her mobility in April 2024, Patsy hasn’t been able to attend the constant rounds of parties and events she did even a year ago. Nonetheless, the staff frequently lifts her into the community van and takes her to the event du jour. “They put me in the back of the van and haul me off. I do that a lot. Honey, I have good parties that I want to go to,” she says with a grin.
Patsy is accompanied to events by family members or her cadre of companions — a group of talented and knowledgeable friends always willing to accompany her whenever and wherever she wants to go.
“Patsy has a very busy calendar, and she fills it with life, lots of variety, lots of fun,” says Zarina Fazaldin, the president of L&Z Historic LLC and a close friend of Patsy’s. “She enjoys her life in a full and spirited way.”
“She loves whatever is going on,” says Catherine Venable, an artist and another friend. “She loves the night life, she loves it so much, and she loves a banquet table. When you are with Patsy, you are doing four or five parties a night.”
Susan Morgan, a fellow member of Patsy’s posse and the editor of R•Home, a Richmond magazine sister publication, agrees. “Her joie de vivre is infectious,” she says. “Patsy’s changed my perspective. She still wants to be there, and to learn, and see, and do. She is a role model for aging gracefully.”
‘Always About the Art’
A Richmonder since 1941, Patsy has been a constant of the city’s arts scene for decades — many of the parties she attends are cultural events and fundraising galas — and she and her family have contributed to many iconic Richmond institutions over the years. Her husband, Hunter R. Pettus Jr., who made his fortune with the Davenport & Co. financial services firm, died in 2013.
Of all the places the family has supported, Patsy’s first love is the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, where she volunteered as a docent decades ago. “I think I was in my fifties,” says Patsy, whose memory is starting to fade with age. “It was tiny, tiny, tiny back then. And they kept adding on wings. I have loved it always.”
At the VMFA Samurai Armor exhibition opening party (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
“Patsy doesn’t have a degree in art history, but she would go to every talk, every lecture, on painting, textiles or architecture. She just absorbed it all,” says her son Edward, known as Ted, a professor at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
“If there is an [exhibition] opening at the VMFA and they have four layers of parties, she goes to all of them,” Morgan confirms. “Then she goes to all of the lectures.”
Sitting in a wheelchair in front of a painting by the locally renowned artist and photographer Willie Anne Wright, whom she has known since the 101-year-old Wright was just getting started, Patsy puts it simply: “It’s always about the art.”
Wright is one of many Richmond artists whose work found a place on the walls of Patsy’s beautifully appointed room at the retirement community. Wright calls Patsy “a great lady of support for the artists of Richmond” and “one of the most active art lovers that we have ever had.”
Venable’s work is there too; the artist herself often accompanies Patsy to gallery openings and other events. “Patsy loves art, probably more than any person I’ve known,” Venable says. “When she would travel, it was predominately about art. My love and respect for her is huge.”
Patsy describes herself as a frustrated artist. “I always, always wanted to be an artist. I just loved art, and I saw it everywhere. Beauty is always there, and I found it all the time. I always kept my eyes open.”
Keeping her eyes open made Patsy a fixture at gallery openings, exhibits, lectures and, in fact, most of Richmond’s cultural events for the past seven decades. “She has been connected to so many groups and given money to all these groups and galleries,” Ted says. “The artists, the deans, the curators, the gallery owners — all the people who run [the Richmond art scene] now — she knew them when they were young artists living in a garage somewhere.”
“I just spread out,” Patsy says. “And I just spread and spread. I was everywhere. Really that’s how it went. I just couldn’t quit going. I’m just one of those people who loves art and loves life.”
Alex Nyerges, the VMFA’s director and CEO, notes, “What is striking about Patsy is her voracious curiosity. Unintimidated by new things or new ideas, she wants to soak up and understand everything. This drives her love of architecture and art.”
In unknowing agreement with her friends, Nyerges adds, “Patsy loves to be where the action is, whether it is in the company of artists and creatives or enjoying events at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.”
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With her namesake staircase at the Valentine (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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Patsy Pettus celebrating her 95th birthday at Reveler with Diana Arenander (Photo by Peter McElhinney)
Staircase Lady
That curiosity leads Patsy to seek the history and cultural importance of anything that fascinates her. “There’s this constant hunger for learning that’s so admirable,” says her granddaughter Julia Pettus. “There is this childlike wonder.”
More than a decade ago Patsy enrolled in an art program at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was smitten, and the courses in architecture inspired some of her most memorable trips around the world. She joined the Center for Palladian Studies, named for a Renaissance master architect who influenced British and American architecture; the Antiquarian Society of Richmond; Historic Richmond; the Decorative Arts Trust; and Ikebana of Richmond, to name but a few.
Her passion for architecture spurred Patsy to donate millions to projects around the city and led her to be dubbed “The Staircase Lady,” a moniker that draws an amused smile from her.
It started with a donation Patsy made to the Valentine museum in memory of her husband. William “Bill” Martin, the museum’s director, named the staircase with the iconic Miller & Rhoads clock over it for Patsy and Hunter, which was apt because the famous Richmond department store played a role in Patsy’s younger days.
She then contributed to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Contemporary Arts, a project that in 2018 Architectural Digest named one of the most anticipated buildings worldwide. “We gave them a million dollars to help them get opened,” Patsy says, referring to her family, although the magnificent stairway that defines the building’s entry was named for Hunter and her. She adds offhandedly, “After that, we kept giving more money for different things.”
“Patsy Pettus and her family’s unwavering commitment to architecture and design has helped to transform VCUarts,” says VCUarts Dean Carmenita D. Higginbotham, Ph.D., of the family’s support. “This dedication … ensures that the performing arts, design and the visual arts are permanent and prominent fixtures in our community … [and propelled] VCUarts forward as an internationally renowned school of art and design.”
After the ICA, Patsy made donations to Monumental Church, one of America’s earliest and most distinctive Greek Revival churches, and the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, among other organizations. In all, thanks to her, six staircases around the region were built or renovated. Patsy has also pledged donations to the VMFA’s upcoming expansion and renovation project as well as VCU’s CoStar Center for Arts and Innovation, under construction across the street from the ICA. Surely more Patsy and Hunter Pettus staircases are coming soon.
Last year, Patsy celebrated her 95th birthday by touring her staircases on a trolley filled with family and friends. In the video of the tour, she sits front and center, with her posture reflecting the model she once was and her expression as regal as a queen’s.
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With her husband, Hunter; she still loves convertibles. (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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Patsy demonstrating her home ec skills in 1950 (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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On the cover of the Fall 1945 Miller & Rhoads catalog (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
A Model Young Woman
Patsy’s love of style and ceremony started at a young age. Born in 1929 in Arkansas, she moved to Virginia in 1941 when her father went to work at Naval Support Facility Dahlgren. Her family settled into the Forest Hill neighborhood of Richmond, and Patsy attended the old John Marshall High School, which she still remembers with some sadness as “the beautiful building that’s gone now. That was a handsome building.”
While she was in high school, Patsy palled around with June Carter, the country music icon who later married Johnny Cash. “June and I dated the same guy,” Patsy recalls. “I had to be home early, so he would take me home and then take out June. I didn’t mind. June and I were the best of friends.”
Patsy and June also dated another high school classmate: Hunter R. Pettus Jr. “You know that question in high school yearbooks, ‘Where do you expect to be in 10 years?’” Patsy asks.
“I said, ‘At the front door, waiting for my great husband to come home.’”
But it wasn’t a straight line from high school to husband.
“I was like 15 years old when I was chosen to come and do a Miller & Rhoads catalog cover,” Patsy says. “They just thought I was good-looking or something, I guess, because they just chose me above a lot of other people.”
During its heyday in the mid-20th century, Miller & Rhoads was considered one of the best department stores in the South, famed for its seasonal Santaland and the Tea Room where ladies lunched on Brunswick stew and chocolate silk pie while enjoying a fashion show. Being selected for the cover of the store’s catalog was a distinct achievement for a young Richmond woman, and it launched Patsy’s modeling career.
“After that, I was all over the place. I was invited to go to Thornton Modeling Agency,” she says, referring to The Walter Thornton Modeling Agency, considered to be one of three top modeling agencies in the country. Patsy worked in Washington, D.C., and then got her big break in New York City. But it wasn’t for her.
“I decided I didn’t want to do it when I got there and saw how people acted. It was kind of wild,” Patsy remembers. “I wasn’t ready for any of that, so I went home.”
She studied at Longwood College (now Longwood University) in Farmville and earned a degree in home economics. After graduating in 1950, Patsy moved back to Richmond and took a job with General Electric showing housewives how to use the latest high-tech equipment: electric stoves.
“I loved to cook,” she says, which is evident in aging newspaper articles, where she can be seen hovering over a large pot as four or five other women look on. She combined her modeling experience with her home economics skills to become a “home economics force,” Ted says. Even decades later, Patsy appeared in several stories on the food and society pages of Richmond newspapers with recipes she created and receptions she attended.
Patsy’s career in home economics ended when she married her old high school flame, Hunter. “I got married and had a wonderful husband and had four fantastic sons, and that kept me busy, honey,” she says with a laugh.
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The Pettus family (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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Patsy with Janne Sirén, director of the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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At her 90th birthday party with Catherine Venable (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
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With Zarina Fazaldin at the 2023 Richmond Folk Festival (Photo courtesy Patsy Pettus/Ted Pettus)
Seeing the World
Patsy might have been busy, but she wanted more.
“She was always hard charging on exploring the world, doing her thing,” says Patsy’s third son, Rob, who, with his wife, Jayne, still lives in Richmond. “She came to the family one night when I was about 13 years old and announced her retirement from motherhood.”
Rob says he and his three brothers — Reggie, who lives outside of Charleston, South Carolina; Rich, who is in Asheville, North Carolina; and Ted — “kind of looked at each other, and were like, ‘Wow, okay, what does she mean?’ She’s like, ‘I’m going to be charging out of here the moment your father gets home from work to go explore my world.’ She would leave a dinner in the oven and go flying out of the house.”
Patsy describes her late husband as quiet, introverted and serious. “He was a good homemaker. He liked to stay home with the children,” she says. “And I left him with the children a lot, because I had to see the world. And he allowed that. Seeing the world was the primary thing in my life, and I am so happy that I have. I have so many wonderful memories.” Patsy has visited every continent except Antarctica.
“The travel bug came all from her,” Rob confirms. “All of her sons love exploring the world and seeing new things. That definitely came from my mom’s side. My dad was happier sitting at home reading the Wall Street Journal.”
During her travels, Patsy didn’t stay at exclusive resorts or five-star hotels. “Another thing I did that was different was I joined the Friendship Force and saw part of the world with them,” she says.
A nonprofit started in 1977 and supported by the late President Jimmy Carter, Friendship Force International aims to improve intercultural relations and encourage friendship by sending ordinary people to partner cities to immerse in the culture. “Families would come here and stay with us and vice versa,” Ted says.
As she grew older, Patsy swapped immersive travel for trips with her grandchildren. She would give them a free trip and they would help her get around. “Later in her life, she would take the entire family on cruises all over the world,” Rob says. “It was great bonding time.”
“I took Teddy a lot,” Patsy says, referring to her son Ted. “My baby boy was 15 years younger than the oldest one, and he became my pet.”
With that, Ted beams.
The pair logged their first trip together to Costa Rica when Ted was 10, and they’ve journeyed to places far and near ever since. “We love going to New York City together. We go together a lot,” Patsy says.
“It is always kind of magical traveling with her. You end up meeting people out of nowhere. You don’t even have to try. They come to her,” Ted says.
Describing herself as curious, Patsy says, “I just find interesting things to do and see. I could just keep going. I didn’t need to stop and rest. I had a lot of energy. It’s hard to describe to you the amount of energy I had.”
Squeezing Every Drop
Patsy Pettus’ energy is legendary. Ted tells of the time a decade ago when they were in New York City together for an event. Others in the group, most a generation younger, went back to the hotel to go to bed. Not Patsy.
“Patsy really likes jazz, so we went to a jazz club and some guy at the door wouldn’t let us in. They were packed. At the time, Patsy was using a walker. So, she played the old lady card. She looked at the guy and said, ‘Don’t you have a spot an old lady can park her walker?’ We were in. The young people were just blown away by this cotton-top lady totally into jazz.”
Then there was the time Patsy, in her 80s and with a walker, really wanted to go to one of the oldest blues clubs in the nation. Undeterred by the long staircase to the door, she took her walker up one step at a time until she reached the club, where she was ushered in like royalty for her efforts.
“She always told us that at her funeral, she wanted a big party,” says Patsy’s daughter-in-law Jayne, whom Patsy credits with throwing a great party. “We always joke that Patsy has FOMO, fear of missing out. I said, ‘Instead of having a funeral, why don’t we throw you a big 90th birthday party?’ She thought it was a fantastic idea.” Jayne planned a party for the ages. Held at the ICA shortly after it opened, the event featured costumes, acrobats, musicians and even a server dressed in a huge hoop skirt that doubled as the dessert table.
As Patsy reflects on her life … Well, actually, she doesn’t. She revels in her happy memories but treats every day as a new adventure.
As her granddaughter Julia says, “Patsy has taught us all how to squeeze every drop out of life. We have learned to go out to the world and shake its hand.”
Sitting in her wheelchair, her eyes bright even if her mobility is limited, Patsy says, “I haven’t given up going.”
