Patrice Claire Heliste was born in 1946 in Michigan, the daughter of Evert and Christine (Alt) Heliste. In 1950, Patrice was living with her parents and three older siblings in Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan. Her father was working as an assembler in an auto factory. Patrice attended Southfield High School in Southfield, Michigan, where she was a member of the pep club all four years and a member of the Future Teachers in 1961. Her senior photograph appears in the 1964 issue of the Southfield High School yearbook. Patrice “Pat” went to college to become a teacher. She was married to Richard “Rick” Paul Brewer, also a Michigan native and graduate of Southfield High School, where he was on multiple sports teams and voted the “most valuable player” one of his years in school. Rick became a school counselor and football coach; Rick and Pat worked together at Avondale Middle School, where Rick was the boys’ school counselor (he was also the varsity football coach as early as 1972) and Pat was the art teacher. In December 1983, there was an advertisement in the Detroit Free Press for Hudson’s Holiday How-Tos: “Craftswoman Patrice Brewer will conduct a class on how to make band boxes, an elegant way to present a gift and a perfect gift in itself. The $6 fee includes materials.” Mrs. Brewer’s class was set to take place on 1 December 1983 at the Twelve Oaks Mall Hudson’s store.
I met both Mr. and Mrs. Brewer when I began the sixth grade in the fall of 1984. Mrs. Brewer was my art teacher through all of sixth, seventh and eighth grades. The curriculum each year was slightly different, and we only had art class for part (a third or a quarter) of the year, as the “specials” shared time – art, shop, home economics, physical education and sometimes band. Our elementary school experience with art was limited and very short-term. I believe only in first and second grade was there an actual art room, and when Elmwood Elementary was closed, we never saw the art teacher we’d had there again – Mrs. Glass. From that point forward, we had Mrs. Warren as our art teacher, and she had a cart she would push from room to room with the supplies we needed for that day’s project. Thus, our supplies were by necessity limited and we didn’t learn much in the order of technique or use much more than crayons and scissors.
But Mrs. Brewer had a large art room with a lot of varied supplies – though sometimes her budget wouldn’t stretch far enough, and we would have to bring something from home. We built pinch pots from clay and glazed them, and she fired them for us. She had a pottery wheel for more advanced students. We made a color wheel by mixing our own paints and she encouraged us to use design elements from the natural world. One year we all brought in two bars of Ivory soap, glued them together and created soap sculptures. We carved linoleum tiles and used them with ink rollers to make print designs. We made perspective drawings. We tried drawing self-portraits – and if it wasn’t already obvious, the self-portraits taught me that I was never meant to be a visual artist. But Mrs. Brewer never had a negative word to say about anyone’s artwork. We only had to put in the effort. She made it clear to us that we didn’t have to be talented artists in order to work art into our daily lives – through decorating our surroundings using artistic principles and being observant of the artistic details in nature.
In sixth grade I was in art class in the middle of the school year, so I didn’t have an opportunity to have Mrs. Brewer sign my yearbook. Mr. Brewer did sign it though – “It’s fourth down and a lifetime to go. Good luck -Rhino” (Then and probably still, Rick Brewer lived his reputation as a football player and coach and was known community-wide and probably through the state of Michigan as “The Rhino”.)
Pat’s father Evert Heliste died in 1991. Mrs. Richard (Patrice) Brewer and Jennifer Brewer, their daughter, were listed among his survivors. Pat’s mother, Christine Heliste, passed away in 2003, at which time Patrice (Richard P.) Brewer and Jennifer A. (Dr. Dennis, MD) Bruce were listed among her survivors. Records show that Rick and Pat are splitting their time between Rochester Hills, Michigan and Haines City, Florida, where they were, last I knew, visiting frequently with another Avondale teacher couple, Sue and Chuck Nurek. Their daughter Jennifer lived in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area for a time, and their twin grandsons were heavily involved in sports – of course! I believe Jennifer and her family now live in the Rapid City, Michigan area. I remember both Mrs. and Mr. Brewer fondly.
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