The world is dimmer and a lot less magical as Patricia “Patty’ Ann Beasley left it on February 2, 2026, wrapped in the arms of her cowboy and her daughters.
Patty was born on April 16, 1950, at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL, the daughter of Alexander Krause and Marie Ora (Moran) Krause. She was the youngest of three sisters who remained best friends all their lives. Her sister, Diana, was a great source of support during her illness, and spent many nights lying on couches and beds with her baby sister.
Patty’s family moved to Ewing, IL and she attended Ewing Grade School and Benton High School. Patty met her one and only love at Ewing Grade School, her cowboy, Monte Keith Beasley. She loved him from the moment she saw him and for every moment since.
Patty and Monte married on July 3, 1976, in Franklin County, IL. They had two daughters, Shannon and Darby.
Patty, always with a paintbrush in one hand and a hammer in the other, made life magic. She could take the most mundane of objects and turn them into something spectacular. Give her a handful of locust shells, a bucket for collecting buckeyes, and a wooden box and she could give any child a full day of fun. She had a never-ending imagination. She used it to make her children’s childhoods so extraordinary that she may have gone a little too far and ended up with kids who believed in Santa and the Easter Bunny til almost high school.
Patty was the daughter of a carpenter and could build anything. All she needed was a box of nails and her lifelong partner and best friend, Monte. Together, they could build anything they needed and could build it better than it could be bought. They didn’t believe in living outside of their means and never owned a credit card their entire lives. Patty left this world not totally sure how to use a debit card and not totally convinced most restaurants would take them.
Patty lived for her family, and adventures with them. She canoed, hiked, and survival-camped the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for seven-day stretches at a time not once, but twice, with her daughter Darby. They portaged canoes across rocks as slippery as ice and slept with one eye open, keeping watch for bears. Both times she was in her 70s.
Patty took a boat to Alaska with Darby, her wife Ashley, and their (then) newborn baby boy, Jackson. They hopped off the boat and into a car, exploring every nook and cranny of the state. Did Patty almost cause a stampede trying to pet a moose during a subsequent adventure to Yellowstone with Darb and Ash? I guess you will just have to use your imagination to try to figure out what was going on in hers! What can be confirmed is she returned home with a suitcase full of bones belonging to either woolly mammoths or dinosaurs, depending on which grandchild you ask.
She spent a week in 107-degree heat at 73 years old hiking the most intense trails in Moab, Utah with her daughter, Shannon. Who overheated during that trip? It wasn’t Patty.
Patty and Monte spent months on the road living in a slide-in camper in the back of their truck, exploring all the western United States. They may or may not have illegally passed into Mexico. They took their houseboat from Illinois and floated all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, with a dappled Chiweenie in tow.
When their children were young, Patty, the kids and Monte, a jockey who rode horses all over the country, spent a summer racing in Canada and living next to Niagara Falls in a house with no stove. No stove? No problem! Patty dug a pit in the backyard, filled it with rocks and put a refrigerator grate over it. She would heat those rocks every day and cook all the family meals over them. When racetrack friends would come over for dinners and offer to bring food, Patty would say, “don’t bring food, bring extra rocks!”
Patty had no problem jumping into a beat-up truck with an equally beat-up fifth-wheel camper attached to it and a daughter behind the wheel that didn’t have the skill set or ability to back the rig up, figuring that since she herself could back it up, between the two of them one could drive it forward and the other could drive it backward.
Patty, Shannon and the grandkids drove that rig all the way to Austin, Texas in the middle of the pandemic. Patty jumped in that same rig a few years later and drove to the Canadian border, all 3 grandkids on board, so they could all see the northern lights and swim to Canada (where she told them they landed when they swam from the shore of Lake Superior to a nearby sand bar.) When the rig inevitably broke down in the middle of nowhere in the Upper Peninsula, Patty, wrench and hammer in hand, jumped under the hood and fixed it right up.
Patty had three grandchildren that she adored and that she continued her magical ways with. Her first grandchild was Jackson Henry Beasley-Piatek, born to Darby and her wife, Ashley Beasley-Piatek. Jackson was followed shortly thereafter by twins Henry Edward Appleton and Alexander Keith Appleton, born to Shannon and her husband, Josh Appleton. All three boys called her Funny Grandma. Because that’s what she was. She could make everyone laugh and could laugh harder than everyone. Her laughter is one of the things her family will miss the most– along with her black tarps covered in dish soap, hoses running, sending grandkid after grandkid flying down her hillbilly slip-and-slide, pet turkeys, goats and chickens sliding behind.
Patty was the nucleus of her family, and while life will never be the same without her, she is within every fiber of the hearts of those left behind. They will carry her with them for the rest of their lives.
Patty was predeceased by her parents, Alexander and Marie Krause; her sister, Barbara Forsyth; her mother-in-law, JoAnn Beasley; her father-in-law, Donnie Beasley; her brother-in-law, Michael Kent Beasely; and her niece, Melony (Beasley) Dalby.
She is survived by her husband, Monte Beasley, her daughters and their spouses, Darby Beasley-Piatek and Ashley Beasley-Piatek and Shannon Appleton and Josh Appleton, her grandchildren, Jackson Henry Beasley-Piatek, Henry Edward Appleton, and Alexander Keith Appleton, her sister Diana (Krause) Znavor and her brother-in-law, David Znavor, her nieces and nephews, Marie Thorton (Phil Thorton), Steven Znavor, Curtis Forsythe, Keith Forsythe and Jenny Bachman, her great-nieces Katlyn (Wyant) Connors (Andrew Connors), Faith Wyant, Peyton Robinson, and Hannah Robinson (Aaron Gibson), and Tessa Thorton, great-great nephews Julian Connors and Riley Connors, Sadie Thorton, great-great niece and nephew Wynonna Gibson and Kasey Gibson, and special friends David Douin, Donna Piatek, Pam and Tom Appleton, Silas Thorton and Owen Thorton.
A special thank you to longtime friend Dr. David Szoke, the only doctor who showed her true compassion and found therapies that provided her with relief.
Cremation Arrangements have been entrusted to Pate Funeral Home, Benton, IL.
In respect of Patty’s wishes, there will be no service. Her promise her whole life was as follows: I will never go to any of your funerals, I hate those things, so you better not have one for me! We won’t, Mama. We love you. See you on the other side.
Online condolences can be given at www.patefh.com
