Written after I heard of Patricia's passing while my wife, Susan Flanigan and I were in North Carolina attending a wedding: "Patricia, my only sibling, passed away peacefully in London, just a couple of hours ago. Patricia, as she was known to our family -- Paddy to her London circle, full name Patricia Helena Irwin McDowell -- was a World War II baby, born to my Royal Ulster Rifles volunteer father and Belfast mother, Pat, before dad, Hamilton Coulter McDowell, left for the North Africa campaign in 1941. Then he was, till 1945, in Sicily and mainland Italy. Dad came home to his beloved wife Pat, and little girl, and resumed his career as a stellar journalist in his native Northern Ireland. Patricia of course didn't recognise this fit and handsome "stranger" who came into her young life, while she and her parents lived temporarily with grandmother Alice, a widow, in the badly-bombed Belfast of the 1940s. But she gradually dropped her defences and came to adore the doting strong and sunny man, her daddy. I came -- a surprise baby, because of my mother's poor health -- in 1952, 11 years my sister's junior. Patricia felt the deep fear of my parents, when I almost died of pyloric stenosis in those first few months after birth, wasting away and crying constantly. The British National Health Service, brought in by a Labour Government shortly before, saved my life, as my mum and dad would proudly recall. Patricia did well academically at our historic junior high/high school, Methodist College, Belfast, and excelled at field hockey and other sports, and was a language star. She entered the provincial government civil service but soon transferred to London, to the what was then the Imperial Civil Service and met the love of her life, a Merchant Navy officer, Ken Orchard, and they had a passionate and loving marriage. Patricia, the energetic, talkative, loving woman; he the quiet, thoughtful, rather shy, rather serious, cultured artist and musician. Ken was to die in his middle 50s of cancer, the year after Susan and I married in Washington, DC (Ken and Patricia came out to DC with Andrew, Clare and Katie for the wedding), leaving a huge hole in Patricia's life, a life which spanned a distinguished career in international development, and a senior position at the famed Museum of Natural History, in Kensington. Patricia brought three wonderful smart talented children into this world -- Stephen, in London, Katie in Brighton/Hove, and Andrew now at Oxford, and six grandchildren of whom she was proud and who loved their "Nana" so much. All three had a literary bent: Stephen with Blackwells the Oxford based publishers/booksellers, running their London operation, Andrew as a star academic at Cambridge, Toronto, and now Oxford, and Katie as a children's book author and editor. In June 1995, when we brought baby Conor to be christened at Knockbreda Church of Ireland parish, in Belfast, where my parents are buried, Patricia came over to be with us and meet her nephew. Through the years, we visited her at her lovely home in Hampstead Garden Suburb, in London, and at the beautiful family thatched cottage near the Normandy Coast, where Conor was thrilled to visit the World War II landing beaches, where the Second batallion of his grandfather's regiment had stormed Sword Beach. We visited the graves of the fallen riflemen dad knew. Auntie Patricia loved to spoil her nephew, Conor; she took him to a production of The Lion King in London and the London Zoo, and she loved to cook for him and once even sent him a batch of haricots verts green beans in the mail because he had loved them so much on a visit! Patricia was with us on the proud day when I received my OBE from The Queen for services to the Northern Irish Peace Process at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace. She visited us in our homes in Washington, DC, twice. I miss her a lot and wish the age gap had not made us closer. I was, for most purposes, an only child for much of my adolescence, but spent many happy summers with Patricia and her family and grew to know the great historic city of London in all its glory. She and I are the last of the McDowells, in our line, since Conor -- who Patricia loved and admired and vice versa -- has left us too. We could not bear to tell her that Conor, a brave and loved young 1st. Lieutenant in the US Marine Corps, died on May 9, 2019, on a high risk manoeuvre at Camp Pendleton, California. He saved his gunner and the other five young men in his light armoured vehcile, but he had no time to save himself. Patricia would have been horrified. But I know they will meet again, as I hope to meet them, when I pass on, This I believe. Rest In Peace, dear sister. May God look after you. Love, your brother, Michael, and sister-in-law, Susan Flanigan.

Leaving my 3 year old in a nursery for the first time, I prized her from my leg and she stared tearfully after me. Three hours later she said 'I'd like to live with that lady, you can come too'. She'd met her Mary Poppins. We were friends ever since. Bye Paddy..see you soon xxx