Patricia Brooks

Patricia Tallon Brooks, a longtime former resident of Tiburon who was active in the community, died peacefully Oct. 6, 2023, in San Rafael, where she had lived for a few years. She was 94.

Mrs. Brooks was born March 30, 1929, to Tom and Anna Condon Tallon in Daly City. She lost her younger sister Mary Lynn when she was in elementary school, and her mother when she was at Mercy High School in Burlingame. After graduating, she attended St. Mary’s School of Nursing in San Francisco, becoming a registered nurse and developing many lifelong friendships there.

She first met her husband-to-be, Frank E. Brooks, when she nursed his mother at St. Mary’s. He was just back from military service during World War II and was working in heavy construction. They met again at a Catholic Youth Organization dance in the city and began dating.

The two were married in 1950 and moved to Old Tiburon the same year, into the Brooks’ family home on Centro West Street. Mr. Brooks’ father came to Tiburon from Napa in 1900 to work on the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. He bought the Centro West lot for $75 in 1915. “Old Tiburon was then working class and ethnic Irish and Italian,” said Mrs. Brooks’ son Francis.

Mrs. Brooks had deep connections in the community. She was a longtime parishioner of St. Hilary’s Church, beginning when it was still located on Esperanza Drive. She volunteered at the Salvage Shop, as the Tiburon Thrift Shop was known then, and was a member of the Corinthian Yacht Club. She and her husband, who owned a Santana 22 sailboat called “The Wet Hen,” were fixtures of the Friday night races for years.

For the big community event known as the Main Street Paint Up in 1957, she chaired the feed-the-crew committee. She also founded the Tiburon Mothers Club, a babysitting exchange.

They were founding members of the Southern Marin Recreation Center, which later became the Tiburon Peninsula Club.

After raising her large family, Mrs. Brooks went back to work in 1970, joining Kaiser Permanente as one of its first pediatric advice nurses and continued that work for 30 years.

In 1965, the family moved to Los Angeles for nearly two years to allow their oldest son to pursue a career in television commercials. Most notably, he appeared in many Mattel toy commercials. They then returned to Tiburon.

She made the most of the connections they made in Hollywood. She worked as a nurse on the sets of the movies “Bullitt,” “Dirty Harry,” and “Petulia,” as well as many commercials filmed in San Francisco, many of them employing her own children as the actors.

Mrs. Brooks’ husband died in 2011. She is survived by five of her six children, Margaret McCann of San Rafael, Francis Brooks of San Rafael, James Brooks of South Lake Tahoe, Peter Brooks of Tiburon, and Anne Slucky of Truckee; 12 grandchildren; five great-grandchildren; two half-brothers, Gerald Tallon of New Jersey and Thomas Tallon of South San Francisco; and a half-sister, Theresa Gurtiza Carey of San Bruno. Her eldest son, Michael Brooks, died in 2009.

A private family service was held, with burial at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma. Donations in her name may be made to the Salvation Army.