Pat was the widow of John T. "Jack" Wilson, a highly regarded sports and magazine editor at the old Philadelphia Bulletin who died in 2006.
"She was a character," said her daughter, Donna Urban. "She was a lot of fun."
Pat was born in Malden, Mass., to George J. Wilson and Laura Bennet Wilson. She came to Philadelphia at age 12 and graduated from Shaw Junior High School and John Bartram High. She also spent a year at Temple University.
Pat was only 18 when she became a pilot for the Civil Air Patrol. At one time, one of her jobs was to tow targets for gunnery practice.
After the war, she took a job as a copy girl for the Inquirer and worked her way up to entertainment reporter. It was there that she met Jack Wilson, who was in the Inquirer sports department before he moved to the Bulletin. They were married in 1949.
Pat took up karate in her 40s and studied with Teruyuki Okazaki, a prominent martial-arts teacher and chairman of the International Shotokan Karate Federation in Philadelphia.
"Pat was of an earlier generation of accomplished women who inspired those of us who were coming up," said Sara Grimes, a fellow karate student and retired journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts. "She was smart, kind and generous with help and advice."
Pat liked to tell the story of how while in Japan with Okazaki, she encountered a squat toilet (a hole in the floor) in a fancy restaurant.
"She somehow managed to get her foot stuck in the toilet," said Grimes, "and her rendition of how she got out of that situation was a hoot."
