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Pat (Anderson) Rushford (1961)

Name
Pat (Anderson) Rushford
Class
1961
Category
HoF Lifetime Achievement
Induction Year
2019

Pat was born in North Dakota, “a farm girl” who loved the wide-open spaces. Her family moved to Longview when she was 12.  She attended Kessler, Monticello Jr. High, and R.A. Long High School.  After graduating, she moved to LaCenter and worked as a secretary/bookkeeper in Vancouver.  In 1963 she married and became a mother of two.  Pat found out that because of her father being a disabled veteran, she was eligible to apply for VA funding to go to college.  In 1972 she graduated with Honors from Clark College with a degree in nursing.

Pat’s writing career began by keeping a journal and then writing poetry.  Pat attended a writing conference in 1980, where she learned the craft of writing and discovered a new career.  In 1979 she started her first book, Have You Hugged Your Teenager Today, and it was published in 1983.  Writing threw her into a world she could never have imagined, and it seemed overnight she became a speaker and a teacher.

She grew to love the contact with the public through book signings and radio and television appearances.  In 1983 she was named Writer of the Year by Mount Hermon Writer’s Conference in California.  Since then she has written fifty books, many on parenting.  She later attended Western Evangelical Seminary, earning an MA Degree in Counseling in 1991.

From 1988 to 1993, Pat worked as Contributing Editor for “Christian Parenting Today” and sold articles to various parenting books.  She also worked as Adjunct Professor and Writer in Residence at Western Evangelical Seminary.  Pat has won additional awards such as “Helen Kelts Writer of the Year, Christian Writers Association. 1991, “Edgar Allen Poe” nomination, and Mystery Writer of America for her book Silent Witness in 1994.  Pat and husband Ron have been married 51 years and have two children, seven grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.