Voices of EPUMC: Meet Pattie Klein

“I was horribly shy when I was young.” 

Those aren’t words you would expect to come out of Pattie Klein’s mouth, but she insists it’s true. The woman lovingly known as “the cruise director” for organizing social outings wasn’t allowed to date or go to the movies with friends when she was younger. Klein’s dad was overprotective, she says. “Somewhere along the way I gained confidence in myself and when I got older my dad apologized to me.”

Klein has been making up for that youthful shyness ever since. Not only is she one of the most active members of Estes Park United Methodist Church, Klein led teams at the Naval Center for Space Technology, a division of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington D.C., and later at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Klein holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering and was the first in her family to go to college. 

“My parents told me they didn’t have money to send me to college, so I’d have to do it on my own.” Klein did.  But she had to work full-time to afford it. “It took me 14 years to get my B.S. degree!” she chuckles.  

Those 14 years paid off. Klein worked on dozens of spacecraft missions during her career, specializing in ground support systems. She also helped design, assemble and evaluate the systems to test out unmanned spacecraft. In the mid-90’s she worked flat out for two years on “Clementine,” a space probe that mapped the moon’s surface in detail and hinted at the possibility of ice at the lunar poles. Klein says it was also supposed to do a “fly-by” of an asteroid, but a computer malfunction effectively ended the mission. “It just went to the sun. It felt awful,” says Klein.

Klein’s mother was raised in West Virginia, the daughter of Russian immigrants. Her father, Alfredo Jesus Lopez, (Klein was her married name) grew up in Trinidad, Colorado where his family had deep roots. He joined what was then the Army Air Force as WWII was ending. Then came the Army, the Army Reserve and the Marine Corps. Klein lived in five different states as a child. “My parents tried to make it fun,” Klein says. “Yay, we’re going to a new place!” they’d cheer.  

Her love of Colorado began when she lived in her father’s hometown for a year at the age of six or seven. She remembers loving the arid Western climate, the mountains and the wildlife. When she retired to Estes Park in 2020 Klein was thrilled to be so close to a national park where she could easily camp and hike. She was also eager to find a Methodist Church.

Klein had grown up Catholic but grew disillusioned with the Catholic church, especially after the sex abuse scandals. She eventually joined a Methodist church in Maryland and became active in what was then known as United Methodist Women (now United Women in Faith). The fact that EPUMC had an active unit helped convince her to join EPUMC when she moved to Estes Park. Over lunch at the Mountain Home Café, then-president Donna Newendorp told her she’d been looking for someone to take over leadership of the group. Would she be interested?  Klein immediately accepted. “It was the first time I ever had anyone tell me that I was literally the answer to their prayers,” Klein says.  “It’s a great fellowship that we have. We have people to lean on and have fun with. And we can also boost our spirituality.”

Klein says she was less intimidated about getting involved in church when she switched to Methodism. She’d always wondered if she was qualified to lead a church group before that. After all, she hadn’t read the whole Bible, she told herself. Was she spiritual enough? But seeing women leading and holding power in the Methodist Church, including female pastors, encouraged her to get active.

Aside from heading EPUMC’s United Women in Faith, Klein serves on the Staff Parish Relations Committee, the Admin Council, and as a lay delegate to the Methodist Church’s Annual Conference. She also volunteers as an usher and greeter.

With all those commitments, could there be any time left in Klein’s day? Apparently so. Before heart surgery in December, she was organizing numerous outings for friends and acquaintances. Klein hopes to get back to all of that later this year when she is fully recovered. After all, she has at least six group chats going on text where she organizes hikes, stargazing, concerts and movie outings, among other activities. “I’m a planner, an organizer for sure,” says Klein. “I’m good at thinking ahead.”

Just like a cruise director.