Pamela Heydon
Pamela Heydon, beloved mother, grandmother, sister, and friend, passed away peacefully on Aug. 29 in San Francisco after a brave battle with pancreatic cancer. She had recently turned 80.
Although she claimed to be shy, she exuded warmth and put people at ease. She will be remembered for her easy smile, infectious laugh, curiosity, incredible organizational skills, generosity, strong will, unconditional love for others, and adventurous and joyous spirit. She is survived by her brother Peter Scott; her sons Allan Heydon (married to Dina Berkowitz) and Scott Heydon (married to Tammy Heydon), and her three grandchildren, Tyler Heydon (age 14), Hannah Heydon (age 12), and Jackson Heydon-Berkowitz (age 7). She will be terribly missed.
She was born Aug. 16, 1935, to George and Ruth Scott in Boston, and raised in the seaside village of Duxbury, Mass. As a girl she loved horseback riding. She was educated at Dana Hall School and Colby Jr. College. After graduating, she worked for several years as a medical secretary at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City. In what she called “the best decision I ever made,” she enrolled in the Columbia University-Presbyterian Hospital (CUPH) School of Nursing, where she made many life-long friends and earned her nursing degree. Although her nursing career was brief, what she learned at CUPH served her well in the years ahead.
In 1961, she married Clark Heydon, DDS, and within four years she had given birth to two sons and moved to Ridgefield, Conn. In 1969, the family moved to Wilton, Conn., where she lived the rest of her life until only recently moving to San Francisco. She became a full-time Mom and loved every minute of it. She was active in the Wilton school system, where she volunteered many hours to various endeavors, particularly applying her considerable work ethic to assisting math teacher Andrew Pinter with the development of a self-paced math program based on independent study (and which she confessed taught her a thing or two about mathematics she had forgotten from grade school).
She and her husband divorced in 1982, and she went to work in the advertising department at the clothing retailer Mitchell’s of Westport, where she made many friends, became expert at word processing and finely targeted direct mail advertising, and helped with the design of one of the first computerized customer relationship management systems. She worked there for nearly 20 years until retiring at the age of 65.
Her retirement years have been filled with: playing tennis and socializing with a close group of friends in a Wilton tennis group; countless hours of time assisting with the running of the Wilton Crest condominium association; dedication to her two children, her three grandchildren, and other family members (including two children of one of her Mitchell’s friends that she referred to as her “Connecticut grandchildren”); visits every summer for the last 30-plus years to her beloved Block Island, where she purchased a small house; reunions with her nursing class, in which she was instrumental in keeping friends connected; and many travels all over the world, including a safari in Botswana, numerous trips to the Caribbean and Europe, and more recently trips to Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, and Bali.
Pam moved to San Francisco in December of last year to be closer to her sons living on the West Coast. She had already made several close friends and was having a wonderful time exploring her adopted city when in March she was given the fateful diagnosis that took her life all too soon.
The family will be burying her ashes in a private ceremony. We have established a nursing scholarship in Pam’s name with her beloved alma mater. In lieu of flowers, gifts in support of the scholarship can be made via checks made out to CUPHSONAA, Inc. (with Pamela S. Heydon Memorial Scholarship Fund written on the memo line) and mailed to CUPHSONAA, Inc., 480 Mamaroneck Avenue, Harrison, N.Y. 10528. All contributions are fully tax-deductible (EIN 13-1681281).
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