Patricia Dillon Bean

Patricia Dillon Bean, a retired Santa Rosa elementary school teacher with a passion for teaching both kids and adults how to read and write, died Friday after an eight-month battle with brain cancer. She was 78.

Bean worked at Bennett Valley School for 22 years before retiring in 1990. After that, she worked with home school families and privately taught adults to read.

“I remember adults and other students coming to our house and my mom working with them,” said Bean’s daughter, Suzanne Danford of Santa Rosa. “She never told us why the adults were there. Some of them were people we as kids knew, and she was protecting their privacy.”

Bean loved working with students of all ages who “thought they couldn’t learn, and always she believed that they could do it,” Danford said.

Bean, whose parents lived in Petaluma, was born in a San Francisco hospital. Her early education was interrupted by severe illness, and she missed some of the “building blocks of how to read,” Danford said.

“Knowing that struggle really motivated her into helping other people,” she said.

Bean attended Santa Rosa High School, Santa Rosa Junior College and Sacramento State College, which later became California State University, Sacramento.

In 1953, Bean married Donald E. Bean, a Santa Rosa native whom she met at First Christian Church of Santa Rosa. Her husband is a retired civil engineer for the city of Sonoma.

Bean taught for two and a half years at Village School and Santa Rosa. But motherhood, with four children, halted her teaching career.

In the late 1960s, Bean returned to the classroom, this time at Bennett Valley School as a substitute teacher. She had not intended to return full-time to teaching but one substitute gig led to another, and soon the school gave her a staff position.

“She ran a no-nonsense classroom,” Danford said, adding that her mother had the teaching personality of a coach. “She worked with the kids that struggled and she loved that.”

Bean, an avid quilter, was a member of the Santa Rosa Quilt Guild. Both she and her husband were members of the Wally Byam Caravan Club International, an RV club for owners of Airstream motor homes and trailers.

Bean was an active member of City Life Fellowship.

In addition to her daughter and husband, she is survived by her sister, Donna Dillon Major of Sacramento; daughter Deanne Bonta of Santa Rosa, and sons Jeffrey Bean and Timothy Bean of Santa Rosa. She also is survived by 11 grandchildren and one great granddaughter.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on May 30 at the Santa Rosa Christian Church, 1315 Pacific Avenue.

— Martin Espinoza