Roswell, Ga. – Pam Paugh let out a hearty laugh – all gleefully crinkling cheeks and swaying body – as she talked about what she will wear to the funeral service for Patsy Ramsey, her big sister.

She will wear a hat, she said, a large, dress hat with something sticking out of the top that Paugh said looks like a spider.

And why?

Because, she says, Patsy loved hats. So Paugh and her sister and as many other people as they can get together will wear hats Thursday for Patsy’s memorial service here.

“It will be a sea of hats,” Paugh said.

Paugh and her sister, Paulette Davis Paugh, were standing outside their father’s stately red brick home in this elegant Atlanta suburb, the same house in which Patsy Ramsey died early Saturday after a 13-year fight with ovarian cancer.

The sisters were three P’s in a Paugh, they always joked – making a pun on their family name. And the Patsy they remembered on this sunny Monday afternoon was not the Patsy of tabloid headlines. The international torrent that followed what they regard as their sister’s private tragedy did not change their memories of her.

For them, JonBenét was a darling little girl, not the code word for a murder mystery.

“I don’t think she ever worried too much about the JonBenét thing,” Pam said, referring to the rampant speculation that Patsy was to blame for her 6-year-old daughter’s unsolved death nearly a decade ago. “She knew what the truth was. We all knew what the truth was. And now, she knows the whole truth.”

Although these women are in mourning, death’s presence does not weigh in the air like the humidity. How could it, when they are talking about their big sister, the one who was always so pretty and so full of faith and so good, the one who set the example for them to follow.

Thursday’s service, they said, can be nothing short of a celebration.

“She’s gone,” Pam says. “She got her victory at 3 o’clock in the morning on Saturday.”

In the last months of her life, Patsy left her home in Michigan and came to Georgia for more extensive cancer treatment. She was optimistic about her chances, Paulette said. After all, the sisters said, Patsy had made miracles happen before.

“She never lost hope”

At times during her illness, she was so sick that the doctors wondered how much longer she could live. And then the next morning, Pam said, Patsy would be standing up, ready to fight some more.

At treatment facilities, Pam said, Patsy became a beacon of hope, a “pied piper,” for those in need of inspiration.

“She never lost hope,” Paulette said. “She always fought strong and persevered on.”

Back in Georgia, Patsy would meet Paulette every morning at a cafe to sip coffee and talk about their days. Patsy always made Paulette go first.

“She always cared about everybody else,” Paulette said.

During her quiet time, she would paint. Always artistically inclined, Patsy seemed to find a calling in her final months, Pam said.

“She just got this gift,” Pam said, “and she did 18 paintings in two months.”

Sometimes she would sit on her father’s back porch or in the driveway to paint. Sometimes she would have her niece – who was born only a few months after JonBenét died – at her side as Patsy taught the girl how to paint. Patsy painted mostly scenes from Michigan, of her favorite places, Pam said.

Patsy also threw herself into raising awareness of ovarian cancer. A few weeks before her death, she and her family founded the Patsy P. Ramsey Ovarian Cancer Foundation. Some of Patsy’s paintings were sold to raise money for the new charity.

The activist role was something Patsy took on more so since JonBenét’s death, Pam said. Her collision with the media after the girl’s death had been brutal, but it also had given her contacts for her work in raising awareness.

“She really used her cancer as a platform,” Pam said. “But she hated that she had this unwanted notoriety.”

That notoriety has made the Paugh family wary today. Paulette is careful to protect her children’s privacy because the family believes JonBenét’s killer is still on the loose.

The family is often guarded with the media. Both Pam and Paulette declined to be photographed for this story because they wanted the focus to be on remembering Patsy. And they declined to release any family photos of her because they hold precious those pictures of their sister that the media has not seen.

That is their Patsy, untarnished by innuendo or suspicion.

“Even though there were people who were cruel to her,” Pam said of Patsy, “she was never cruel back to them.”

Back in the public eye

Patsy’s death has once again turned a private tragedy into a public spectacle for the family and put the Paughs into a strange world. At one point Monday, Paulette asked Pam if CNN’s Larry King had called yet. Pam said she has received calls from other news-media personalities.

But Pam and Paulette hope that rumor and mystery will not be Patsy’s legacy. Rather, they want people to remember her strong faith in God, her work in fighting cancer and the kindheartedness that once caused her to buy new clothes for a homeless family in Boulder and leave them anonymously outside the old school bus in which the family was living.

And, the sisters said, they want everyone to remember the love Patsy had for her daughter.

“I’ve got to imagine,” Pam said, her smile breaking for just a moment and tears welling in her eyes, “that JonBenét is a pretty happy camper up in heaven right now.”

Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.