Dr. James Pataky

Dr. James Pataky, MD (“Jim”) died in the presence of family on Oct. 19, 2020. He breathed final breaths as a patient at the hospital where he had served for nearly 40 years as a physician. A few days earlier, he had suffered a heart attack.

His final conscious moments were enjoyed without pain in the company of his beloved wife, Bobbi. Weary from surgery, he had sat down for a short nap beside the crackling wood stove. He did not suffer, nor did he awaken. Ever considerate of others’ needs over his own, he waited, comatose, till all three kids and his biggest sister gathered to send him onward with love and reverence through that final threshold.

Two months and 70 years earlier, he had entered the world in Los Angeles General Hospital, the youngest of three siblings born to Elmer and Lillian (née Wisz) Pataky. They were first-generation Americans born in Chicago to poor immigrants from Hungary and Poland, respectively. In defiance of his tuberculosis and its supposed death sentence, Elmer escaped the sanitarium in Chicago and lit out for the West Coast with Lillian to live long lives.

When Jim was born the family lived in the San Bernardino Mountains, in a log cabin Elmer had built called Pat’s Lodge. Jim remembered early memories of heavy snowstorms and a close-call wildfire. They left California for Missouri when Jim was five, but he took a fascination with sailing with him, inspired by the first sailboats he ever saw on Lake Arrowhead. Sailing would become a major love of his life.

They loaded up an old farm truck for the move to the “center place.” Elmer had “got religion,” as Jim put it, while working as a carpenter down in San Bernardino, a windy 30-mile drive from home. Elmer became RLDS, a sect headquartered in Independence, Mo., and he felt called to move out there.

Initially, the Patakys rented a working farm in Sherrydale, near Nashua, Mo., and earned part of their keep feeding the cows and pigs. They also raised chickens and a garden, and Jim raised a lamb. Eldest sister, Pam, got a horse. Elmer joined a church association and began building the house the family would inhabit through all of Jim’s school years. They lived in the basement for many years until it was finished. They and a dozen other families each had a lot on 150 otherwise-shared acres, where feed corn and cattle were grown communally.

Jim graduated from public high school nearby. He went on to university, majoring in chemistry and math at Graceland College in Iowa, graduating early as valedictorian. He initially aimed for a research career, intent on curing diseases, but a summer-long lab internship in 1970 cured him of that vision. He wanted to help people but realized he was best suited to work with patients directly, one-on-one, doing what he could to improve, extend and understand individual lives.

While he was in college, his parents bought land in southern Missouri’s Ozarks, where they farmed, gardened, and ran a sawmill. In Columbia, Mo., Jim started med school — and his first marriage — in 1971. Next came his internship and residency in Little Rock, Ark. His first son, Jeremy, was born just days before they moved to North Idaho in 1979, where he opened his private cardiology practice with Dr. Del Lutsenhizer.

Throughout his entire career and short retirement, he was based in Kootenai County. After 26 years of private practice, he joined Kootenai Heart Clinics Northwest in 2005 and then Kootenai Health as a cardiology internist in 2010. He was always quick to lend assurance where it was needed, joking “Trust me, I’m a doctor.” He extolled the Inland Northwest and the close friends and colleagues with whom he shared his home place.

In 1984, he married Bobbi and embraced her daughter, Kristen, as his own. Jim and Bobbi had their son, Corey, two years later. Jim was a hard-working, devoted father and husband; he provided for everyone and applied his whole heart and mind to all he did. Jim and Bobbi kept their landline listed in the phonebook for 35 years and never batted an eye when patients called Doctor Pataky at home on days off.

He first sailed dinghies and went on to place well in performance sailboat class races while still in the Midwest. Later, the lakes of North Idaho and the salt chuck of the San Juan Islands, British Columbia, Alaska, and beyond kept air in his sails, almost till the day he died. He sailed his J-24 on Lake Coeur d’Alene and then gunkholed Pend Oreille in a Newport 28, and later the Pearson 365 ketch he shared with Dr. Jim Lea.

Some of his finest memories involved the many sailing trips he enjoyed over on the coast, too, some with just Bobbi or the family, some accompanied by the Dixons, the Leas, the Halls and other friends. Many trips on Dr. Lea’s boat on the coast over the last decade were a major highlight of his life, as well.

In addition to being a fine doctor and a skilled and experienced sailor, Jim was a master woodworker, handyman, voracious reader and pianist. From the floor-to-ceiling rolling-ladder library he built to elegant ship models, he carved museum-quality furniture and countless wooden frames he built for Bobbi’s stained-glass creations; he was a prolific maker. If he wasn’t at work or on the water, he was in his shop or working on the property. His life could be viewed as a sequence of creative or do-it-yourself home improvement projects, all driven by an ethos of perfectionism, generosity and process. He challenged himself over and over and grew his skillset till the end.

Early on he considered trying to become a concert pianist. Though he chose a different path, music remained integral to his life and many hours of his retirement were spent practicing.

Jim tried to leave everything better than he found it. He was never a church goer, though he steered his course with a strong instinct for justness and a deep capacity for self-sacrifice and hard work. Anything worth doing at all is worth doing right, he always said. He could rebuild old truck engines and play Chopin concertos by memory. He never could bring himself to say goodbye on phone calls, but had no trouble expressing love and pride for his family. Over and over, he told his kids to do what they can to make the world a better place.

To that end, in lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be given to the Kootenai Health Foundation Family Medicine Residency fund to support scholarships and specialized training for rural medicine in honor of Jim Pataky, MD. From kootenaihealthfoundation.org/donate-online, check “Tribute Gift” and denote Memorial Gift for Dr. James Pataky; choose “Family Medicine Residency” in the Designation section. Alternatively, checks payable to Kootenai Health Foundation with the memo “In memory of Dr. James Pataky” can be sent to Kootenai Health Foundation, 2003 Kootenai Health Way, Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814.

Jim was preceded in death by his parents and his older sister, Judy Rutkowski, and her husband, Phil. He is survived by his sister, Pam Vandel of Oakland, Ore.; his wife, Bobbi Pataky of Coeur d’Alene; sons, Jeremy Pataky of McCarthy and Anchorage, Alaska and Corey Pataky, his wife, Heather, and their son, Jackson of Coeur d’Alene; and daughter, Kristen Katkavich, her husband, Scott, and their three kids, Cole, Preston and Macy of Castle Rock, Colo.; other extended family members likewise live on, too.

A celebration of life will be held sometime in Spring 2021. In the meantime, he will be sorely missed and well-remembered by the many folks he knew and loved.

Yates Funeral Home has been entrusted with final arrangements. Please visit Jim’s memorial and sign his online guestbook at www.yatesfuneralhomes.com