Pamela Allen

Pamela Rae Allen (Pam), 56, succumbed to her courageous fourteen-month battle with cancer on Friday, April 26th at BSA Hospice in Amarillo, TX. Visitation will be 6-8pm Monday at Brooks Funeral Directors in Canyon. A funeral service will take place at 4pm Tuesday at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Amarillo, Rev. Joan Gaines officiating. Burial will follow at Dreamland Cemetery in Canyon. Pam was born on November 9, 1956, in Crawford County, Iowa, and was raised there in the small German farming community of Schleswig. She grew up on the family farm and was integral to its success, learning from a tender age to cook for the family and to care lovingly for the livestock (except the chickens, she really detested the chickens...but there were 10,000 of them in the laying house - who can blame her?). She carried these skills with her throughout her life, and everyone knew her to be a generous and talented cook, a humble and hospitable hostess, a lover of nature and simple pleasures, a fearless and skilled do-it-yourself expert, and a friend to all animals. Pam was always an exceptionally bright student, graduating from Schleswig High School in 1974. A great beauty, she met the love of her life, Mitch, in Iowa and they married on June 1, 1974. They were blessed with two children. At the time of their children's births, there were five generations of Pam's family living in her small hometown of roughly 1,000 people. Pam and Mitch and their children moved from Schleswig to Canyon, TX, in 1984 for Mitch's career as a fat-cattle buyer. There Pam had the opportunity to attend college and she flourished, graduating with a degree in Elementary Education from West Texas State University. She maintained a 4.0 GPA, juggling a busy young family and playing the role of second mother to all the neighborhood children. She could do it all with grace, and seemingly without effort. Pam and Mitch created a family life reflective of their Christian values and their Midwestern, agrarian roots. Relationships, not things, were their prizes. A more energetically devoted daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother will never be found. Pam, known as ""Gigi"" to her three young grandchildren, knew no limits in her love for her progeny, and she gave them more love in a day, EVERY single day, than many experience in a lifetime. Vacationing under the mountain skies of Colorado and New Mexico, Pam and her family forged sweet, tender memories over the years. A perfect day for her there would include splitting wood, picnicking in the forest, reeling in a trout, and scouting for majestic elk at dusk with her faithful husband and dear family. They will always carry in their hearts her maxim on life: live simply, laugh often, and love deeply. Pam became an elementary school teacher in the Canyon Independent School District in 1989, where she taught at Sundown Lane Elementary, then at Greenways Elementary, and finally at her beloved Crestview Elementary. Over the decades she worked tirelessly with her 4th and 5th grade students not only on their mathematical and other academic skills but also instilling in them a sense of civic duty and community, self-confidence, independence, and respect for all things, including themselves. Pam deeply loved her students and her colleagues. Selflessly loving others was Pam's constant state of being as a servant of Jesus Christ. She could find redeeming value in any situation, in any person (and to her husband's chagrin, any item that might otherwise make it to a trash barrel). ""Salt of the earth"" aptly describes this kind, unpretentious Christian woman, and ""hard worker"" cannot begin to adequately cover her work ethic. She was the fervent cheerleader and #1 supporter of many, lifting them like ""wind beneath (their) wings,"" unafraid to give a tender push (or a shove) when it was needed. Her capacity for forgiveness, though tested often, was exemplary and enlightened. She was the unassumi