Patricia Engel

Please share any thoughts, memories, photos, videos, and stories in celebration of Patricia. Using content from this memorial, we will create a commemorative mini-documentary celebrating the life of our wonderful Pat. We will launch the mini-doc at a screening via Zoom, to which you will all be invited, and then we will share it with everyone as a video. BIOGRAPHY Our Pat – Patricia Lee Schreiner Engel (née Burbridge) – pioneer of sex education and human sexuality research, much-loved and admired mother, grandmother “Grammy”, great-grandmother, and loving and supportive friend to many far and wide – died suddenly on Sunday, December 14, 2025 at her home in Bentley Village, Naples, Florida. What was the most important thing about Grammy? These were a few off-the-cuff and unedited remarks that paint a picture: "Made people feel warm and nice" "You would leave feeling happier than when you came - validated and somehow secure" "Consistent high performance in all areas" (in the style of corporate performance reviews) "Positive. Faith in the order of the universe. She believed everything could and should be fixed and made right." This is an outline of the story behind this beautiful person … Pat was born in 1937 in Seattle to Charles C Burbridge of Iowa, a Stanford-educated civil engineer, and Golda I Dickey of Oklahoma. She was raised in the Midwest, first in Indianapolis, then in the Chicago suburbs, and spent time during WW2 on a grapefruit farm in Arizona while recuperating from TB. Hard-working and always determined to succeed, she planned to become a doctor. She excelled scholastically and in extracurricular activities at high school and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Science in 1959. She was accepted by the medical school only to learn that she would be the only female medical student in that year. She backed off to pursue the more standard route of wife and mother. She later explained “I lost my nerve”. While at college, a friend took her to Frank Lloyd Wright's Unitarian Meeting House in Madison. This would start a life-long connection to the Unitarian-Universalist (UU) Church and strongly influence the path of her life. She was immediately attracted to its inclusiveness, open-mindedness, and lack of dogma. She married fellow Madison graduate, John Schreiner. They had two daughters, Kirsten and Karin, and settled in Stamford, Connecticut, where they were enthusiastic members of the Stamford UU congregation. Here, in the mid 1960’s, she was inspired by a talk from sex education pioneer Eleanor “Ranger” Hamilton. With Ranger as her mentor, she found her vocation in sex education and research. It was an era of burgeoning sexual permissiveness and experimentation, but also profound ignorance about human sexuality, with little research in relevant science and therapy. She said, "I was in the right place, at the right time, with the right academic interest to be a contributor to some ground-breaking work". Pat joined the UU team that created the first-ever sex education course for Sunday Schools in America, “About Your Sexuality”, launched in the early ‘70s. Controversial at the time, it became much imitated by other denominations and is still used in updated form. A 1972 article in the New York Times preserves some of Pat’s thinking: “Teenagers want solid values,” says Mrs. Pat Schreiner, a 34‐year‐old Stamford, Conn., housewife and mother who helped develop the Unitarian program. “They see a lot of things going on among their parents’ and other adults’ marriages that they don't like. They want something better for themselves.” Pat took higher degrees in psychology at New York University and completed clinical qualifications. Her 1979 PhD thesis was "Female Sexual Arousability: Its relation to gonadal hormones and the menstrual cycle", some of the earliest scientific work on a poorly understood topic. In 1974, she married marketing executive Peter H Engel and became a devoted mother to his three children – Mark, Andrew, and Melissa – and all lived together as one family, which included several beloved “foster” children over the years, notably Laurie O’Neill. Famously, Pat was as generous and caring for her family and friends as she was conscientious and determined for her career. As a mother and, later, a grandmother, she was extraordinarily encouraging, loving, non-judgemental, and kind. Post-PhD, she became associate professor in obstetrics and gynecology, and psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, working as a team with Dr Raul Schiavi. He focused on men, she on women. They established a sex therapy program with low fees. They trained doctors, psychologists, and social workers. From the ‘70s to ‘90s, her research with Schiavi was much-published in the academic press (including, notably, a seminal paper on depression and female sexual desire), she authored chapters of books and contributions to textbooks, and she was often quoted on sex-related topics in the popular press. She was also an organizer and promoter for the field. At a local level, she was an original member of The Keen Group in 1980 – women sexologists, working in a mostly male environment in NY area medical schools, who started meeting monthly at Keen’s Chop House on W 36th St to share experience and practice. At the national level, she was very active in the Society for Sex Therapy and Research (SSTAR) and elected its president for 1995-7. Amongst other honors, she was on the scientific board of the Kinsey Institute, a member of the International Association of Sex Research (IASR), and director-at-large for the International Society for Women’s Sexual Health (ISSWSH). Retiring in the late ‘90’s, Pat became known as Grammy with, ultimately, 11 grandchildren across three continents. “I taught my children to travel”, she said. All families convened at “Camp Grammy” for two weeks every summer, hosted for many years at her home in Cold Spring NY, overlooking the Hudson Valley, dubbed “Dreamland” by one grandchild. This tradition encouraged enduring bonds between the cousins. Additionally, every grandchild was treated at the age of 11 or 12 to a special solo “Grammy Trip” to an exotic destination of their choice. In 2018 she moved to Vi Bentley Village in Naples, Florida where she loved and was loved by a community of new friends, including a new partner, Lyle Warnock. She joined and supported the local UU congregation. She is survived by her five children (Mark, Kirsten, Andrew, Karin, Melissa), 11 grandchildren (Hunter, Cosmo, Austin, Lucia, Zai, Gabriel, BJ, Quentin, Chase, Lila, Peri) and four great-grandchildren (Frida, Nicholas, Oliver, and Aiza). Final words go to Pat. This is the very last paragraph of her last text to one grandchild preparing for an important occasion, written just two days before her death. It could just as well be her last message to all of us: Just know that I love you 💕 … so very much 🥰 and miss being with you. Enjoy your weekend events and feel the warmth of all my love surrounding you…. Grammy