Patricia Spencer (’09 M.A.) knows her story is unusual — but that’s her favorite kind of story.

Last year, Patricia was ready for closure. For more than a dozen years, she held on to the American flag she’d been given in honor of her son, David Patrick Spencer (’11), who had served in the military before his passing in 2012.

“I remember the day so well,” Patricia says. “I had two flags, my husband's and my son's, and the proper way to dispose of them is to burn the flag, you just don't throw it away. I called at least three places, the VA and different organizations that help veterans, but nobody answered.”

And then she decided to give the UNT Student Veteran Services a try.

After three rings, the voice of a student worker named Byron answered her from the other side. She explained her situation and after a follow-up from James Davenport, director of UNT’s Student Veteran Services, Patricia was able to leave her son’s flag at the office, knowing it was in good hands and would be disposed of properly and with honor.

“I left the office and that's when I decided I was going to give my house to UNT,” she says. “Because Byron answered.”

Patricia subsequently began the process of leaving her Denton property to the university as part of a planned gift that will ultimately benefit UNT’s Pohl Recreation Center — where she swims almost daily.

“My gift to UNT is so important to me,” Patricia say. “I'm really not going to be here to see anything, but every time I go to the rec center, I feel good about it. It's not a morbid thing at all — it's a very happy thing, because students are going to benefit from it for who knows how long.”

Patricia’s connection to UNT dates back more than 20 years and started with a phone call from her son. David would drive back and forth from Fort Riley, Kansas to El Paso, Texas to visit home, passing through Denton on the way. The university piqued his interest and after looking into offerings, he thought the nationally accredited graduate program in journalism would be a good fit for Patricia, whose dream was to be a writer.

Patricia had already retired from a 19-year career on El Paso’s police force, but had kept a career as a writer, and specifically as a journalist, on the back burner. David’s call turned into a trip to Denton, a meeting with the Mayborn School’s director at the time and a wild 25-hour dash to meet her first-ever journalism school deadline.

“The program director says, ‘The deadline for a $20,000 scholarship is tomorrow at four o’clock. Can you meet it?’ And this was at three o’clock the day before,” she says.

And a whirlwind of events, including a sequence of small acts of kindness, ensued.

“I went to Willis Library. I didn't know anybody, and I told the head librarian what was going on,” Patricia recalls. “She says, ‘Use my office, I'll log on for you — get whatever you need.’ I mean, she just let me do it.”

In need of her resume and a writing sample, she called her dear friends and neighbors to break into her home in El Paso and fax the documents to Willis Library. Patricia got her scholarship submission in on time the next day and, sure enough, she was awarded the Mayborn Graduate Scholarship, which covers all tuition and textbook fees for students.

Patricia was a perfect fit for the program. Her restless mind, eager for the next and most interesting story, latched onto a unique research topic that would earn her a $10,000 grant to research media ethics in Calcutta — located in West Bengal, which was the only democratically-elected communist state government in the world.

“I got a thesis award to do a study on how multilingual Indian reporters use media ethics in their daily reporting,” she says. “I went to India twice, made lots of friends, got into all the publishing houses to interview the editors. It was so exciting.”

Patricia completed her master’s degree in 2009 and though she hasn’t worked as a professional journalist, she hasn’t stopped telling stories.

“I had a fantastic time — the best experience ever — and that's why I want to come back here for creative writing,” she says.

In fact, her writing ambitions have both shifted and wildly expanded.

“My dream did not materialize until now. It's not reporting — it's playwriting,” she says. “And I discovered that very unexpectedly one day. I just started writing a play off the top of my head.”

Next up, Patricia is embarking on a journey to Africa and Asia, during which time she plans to work on three unique plays, including one written for the hearing-impaired community, utilizing art and audience participation.

“If I ever get this play published, and I get any kind of money out of that — it's all going to come back here. I joke, but it might come true,” she says. “There are people here that really impacted my life in a very positive way, and I just felt that I needed to give back to UNT because of everything they did for me and my family.”