RETIREMENTS: Pat Bayer, Skaggs Catholic Center

Friday, May. 31, 2024

DRAPER — After 21 years in Utah Catholic Schools, Pat Bayer retired as Skaggs Catholic Center/ JDCHS logistics and director in December. Throughout her career there Bayer had many titles and roles: development office volunteer/employee, acting development director; rites and rituals coordinator and logistics and special projects director. 

Except for a three year-break to develop training programs at her husband Bob’s consulting firm, JBR, Bayer served continuously at the Skaggs Center since 2002. During that time, she particularly enjoyed working with the student ambassadors and overseeing Juan Diego’s rites and rituals, she said.

Her experience with the ambassadors was “one of the best things that I ever did,” she said.” I enjoyed it. I got to know the kids, I got to teach them things, and that was wonderful.”   

When Juan Diego opened in 1999, it had to develop its own rites and rituals from scratch. Creating these with Principal Dr. Galey Colosimo was a deliberate process, Bayer said. “I loved doing those because they were intentionally crafted. That was one thing Dr. Colosimo did. We wanted our students from the day they stepped foot on campus, to have things to look at and say, ‘This represents who we are; this is our motto; this is our charism; this is what we do, who we are.’ That was so special, because it was a privilege to be the guardian of those rites and traditions, to introduce them [to the seniors] and share with them why they were so special and why they represented the school and that they were there for them and their parents. It was a gift to be able to be part of that.” 

Working with Dr. Colosimo and the administration over the years was “a wonderfully creative endeavor,” Bayer said. “Not everyone appreciates all the details, or having to do things a certain way because it represents us well. I was a thread that ran through all the different people that moved through positions, and I took my cue from Dr. Colosimo. He has the gift of long vision. So, the standards that he set early on, were really, really excellent.”

Being involved with special events, extracurricular events and outside groups meant spending many long hours on campus and during the last couple of years Bayer started to cut back and began to consider retirement.

“As I got older, over the last year and a half, I could sense that I was slowing down and if I couldn’t give to the school and the administration and the job, I was not happy to be there,” she said.

In retirement Bayer has started to reorganize her home, something she was unable to do while she worked the long hours, she said. Bayer also has a passion for genealogy and along with spending time with her family, her daughter and son and grandson, she hopes to do additional research on her family tree.

“I fell in love with that years ago, and I started it and my dad picked up on it back when he was still with us, and my daughter Kate did, too,” she said. “So that’s something I’d like to pursue further, and I’d like to do some crafts.”

Bayer is enjoying having some free, unstructured time, she said. “Right now, I’m quite happy … not having to follow a schedule.”