Photo courtesy of Jeff Patton
Yvette and Jeff Patton sit close together across the table, shoulders just barely brushing one another. The two prove that opposites really do attract. Where Yvette is bubbly, Jeff is calm. Her blonde hair juxtaposes his darker features. An opportunity to offer commentary for Yvette is usually no more than a head nod from Jeff.
Between Jeff’s Christmas trees and Yvette’s decorating business, The Patton family has been a staple in the holiday culture of Lakewood since 1975.
Starting on Nov. 15, their iconic white and blue tents pop up in the parking lot of the Lakewood Village Shopping Center and the Christmas chaos begins.
Yvette is holding a printed version of the Lakewood/East Dallas Advocate’s 2014 December edition. She reads through it, pointing out moments she recognized from their feature “A Christmas Story.” Jeff smiles softly as Yvette recounts bits of the story out loud. It’s been 10 years since they last spoke to the Advocate. Ten Christmases and 10 anniversaries, resulting in what is now 31 years of marriage and business.
But a lot can happen in 10 years. Now, their son John has taken over the tree lot. Not that it was particularly a shock, as he’s been watching Jeff and Yvette service the neighborhood with their trees since he was a boy.
“Well he worked for me growing up, worked at the tree lot,” Jeff says. “It gets in your blood. I mean, if you work there and you don’t love it, there’s something wrong with you because everybody’s in a great mood.”
Jeff, a Lakewood native, has watched the neighborhood grow and change — all from the same home he’s lived in since 1953.
“It’s a beautiful thing, really, it’s progressed. Wonderful. I mean, my neighborhood used to be raw, run down,” he says.
Yvette chimes in with a sense of amusement, “Here’s what I love about what Jeff does — he’ll go, ‘Oh, that used to be an old ice cream shop’ or, ‘Oh, that was this Five-and-Dime, where you would go sit and get a soda at the fountain.’”
Jeff says the most consistent thing he’s observed is Lakewood’s excitement and appetite for the holiday season.
“They all just love Christmas,” Jeff smiles.
The pair owe a lot to Christmas. In fact, they met because of a Christmas tree.
It was 1980 and Jeff was delivering a tree in Yvette’s office building when he stumbled upon her boss.
“Her boss was standing in front of a big, 15-foot, just terrible tree, and she was crying,” he says.
Jeff saw an opportunity to replace the tree with one of his own. Yvette’s boss happily accepted his offer and when he returned to drop off payment information, a young Yvette was working the desk.
So every year, right around the holiday season, Jeff would deliver trees to her office. The two also began to bump into each other around the city and would keep in touch on and off.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone,” Yvette cracks a smile. “He would drive me around all these properties and tell me about all this money he was making.”
Jeff quickly retorts, “I was trying to impress her.”
Years later, the two became a duo and began taking on the tree business together. Yvette would be helping and hearing people ask if they could also have their trees decorated.
She had been a florist for several years and took on decorating when she saw fit. This felt like an opportunity to offer up her talents and she took it. She’s been decorating Christmas trees with Jeff ever since.
They had found the perfect combination of their passions. The retelling of their Hallmark-esque story seems to bring with it a warm and nostalgic feeling between the two, who also got married on Christmas.
But Christmas isn’t the only way the Pattons have become fixtures in the community. Yvette has taken on her own ministry through The Haven of Love, founded by Karen Green — providing services and resources to women in prison systems, county jails and treatment facilities with the intention to transition them back into society.
“It’s such a worthy program,” she says. “They regain their families, their children, they identify with who they really are now.”
Yvette makes it clear that her pursuit of this work was directly a result of Jeff’s support. In 2014, she shared with him a deep sense of conviction to do ministry work within the prisons — hesitantly and ready for pushback.
She thought, “there’s no way Jeff’s gonna let me go do prison ministry.” Together, the two share multiple children and at the time, they were only a few years removed from the death of their 21-year-old son Preston and raising their youngest son, Jeffrey Jr. Who would take care of Jeffrey Jr. when she was out ministering? How would she cover the costs associated with this kind of ministry? Questions seemed to overflow as Yvette considered her options.
“You know what he said?” Yvette smiles. Jeff urged her to follow the call she so deeply desired to answer, no matter the possible challenges. He even offered to take care of Jeffrey Jr. and provide any financial support she needed.
“That’s commitment,” Yvette says.
That same commitment, through the grief of losing a child, maintaining the family business and serving the community, seemed to have rubbed off on John. On top of taking over the lot for the past 10 or so years, he is now operating four transitional living homes for men as a licensed counselor.
As the Pattons gear up for another holiday season, Jeff says they’re looking forward to “a long tenure” in the neighborhood. Lakewood can expect fresh Christmas trees from the Patton family for years to come, as their grandson Jeffrey III has already declared his claim to the Christmas throne.
