‘Always just show up’: Family remembers grandmother killed Christmas Eve in KCK
He was Croatian. She was Slovak. They met in the 1950s at the 5th Street Hall, in Kansas City, Kansas, where members of the Croatian community used to gather for celebrations. He asked her for a dance.
Joseph “Joe” Panijan was 23. He had recently escaped from communist Yugoslavia. After a quick stint in Italy and France, he moved to Kansas City, Kansas. Patricia, or “Pat,” who would eventually take his last name, grew up in Sugar Creek.
Family still tells the story of how, before their wedding, Joe Panijan showed up to the hospital where Pat was working to win her back after an argument.
He was in a suit. It worked. He bought a ring. She said yes.
“We were young people in love, that’s all,” Joe Panijan, now 86, told The Star.
On Tuesday, he sat inside his sister’s house in the 2900 block of North 73rd Place, gazing out the window at his own home of more than 50 years. He watched silently as neighbors across the street slowed down their vehicles or stopped on their walks to look at the smattering of bullet holes and array of flowers outlining his front porch.
Less than a week earlier, on Christmas Eve, he and his wife were watching TV in their front room when gunshots rang out. He was injured in the shooting when more than a dozen bullets riddled the front of the house. Pat Panijan, 85, was killed.
The killing has shocked those on the block, including many family members, and the Kansas City Croatian community.
Now, as they plan to bury their mother, Panijan’s three daughters reflect on the home their parents built, and the legacy their mother leaves behind.
A marriage built on teamwork, respect
Joe Panijan couldn’t speak English at first. So while he assimilated to life in America, Pat Panijan tried to assimilate in her own way, family said. She learned some Croatian and began to cook his favorite dishes, including bean soup, complete with a ham hock. She came to pride herself in her apple strudel and povitica, a Croatian dessert.
She loved what he loved.
He called her Checharu, a play on the word “sugar” in Croatian. Later, they’d give their youngest of three daughters the middle name Charu.
They cared for each other in sickness and in health: when she struggled with depression and then later, stomach cancer; and more recently, as he struggled with his own illnesses. Pat Panijan recently insisted her husband get on a plane with her to Minnesota, hoping they’d get answers at Mayo Clinic for his health troubles. So he did.
“She really helped keep you alive these last 30 years,” their youngest daughter, Gina Dorough, said to her father as they reminisced on Tuesday.
“She always encouraged him,” she said later. “She kept him movin’ and groovin’.”
Panijan’s family takes up four houses on the same block. Family and friends bustled between houses as they made funeral arrangements and waited for any information on who fired into the house on Christmas Eve, and why.
“I had a beautiful wife and I love her, and I did everything for her to make us comfortable,” Joe Panijan said, adding that they worked hard to never be lacking in money or respect for one another.
“Or love,” one of his daughters called out from the other room.
Family first
Inside their house on North 73rd Place, family came first.
Pat Panijan grew up without a mother. Her father, a professional baseball player, was often away. For the most part, her older sister raised her, family said. Some nights, food was scarce.
Last August, when Dorough was visiting home, she said her mother began crying as they sat together in the living room.
“I never thought that I’d be able to have a family like this when I was growing up,” Dorough recalled her mother saying.
Decades earlier, the couple began buying, remodeling and renting out properties in Kansas City, Kansas.
As their family grew, they’d make a day of preparing homes for new residents. With three young girls in tow, they’d paint walls and pull weeds. On the way home, they’d grab dinner or ice cream — a treat for the frugal family. The girls, now grown women in the real estate business themselves, remembered giggling the whole way home.
Though Pat Panijan tried on different jobs here and there, in addition to helping with the properties, her main focus was her girls. She drove them to basketball, volleyball and softball practices. In the evening, she always made sure a hot meal was on the table.
Once her daughters were grown, Pat Panijan went back to school, earning associate’s degrees in general studies and science, family said. When she was in her 60s, she got her bachelor’s degree in geology.
Their mother was determined to get her degrees, Dorough said. She had incredible drive. It’s part of what made her such a successful mother.
A house, a home
The house is still strung with colorful lights. A Christmas tree is still lit in the window.
Since the shooting, the house has remained mostly untouched. Memories still cover the wall inside the entryway. Photos Pat Panijan printed onto computer paper and placed in frames. Knickknacks from their many travels. Artwork several years old from her now grown grandson, and fresh artwork from her young granddaughter.
On the table is a palm-sized rock from Normandy, where Pat Panijan’s uncle died in World War II. On it, she wrote: “Omaha Beach,” dated October 2013.
On a desk in the kitchen sits a to-do list. At the top, in Pat Panijan’s writing, is a reminder to call her grandson.
The brown linoleum in the kitchen is taped together in places. Pat Panijan’s daughters used to give her a hard time about not updating their family home. But their mother’s philosophy was that the rental properties came first.
“She wanted to make these homes nice places for people to live,” Dorough said, adding that her mother hoped to create an affordable environment mirroring the one she created for her own family. And she hated the idea of raising rent.
When Dorough drives by other people’s houses, she imagines what kind of love is going on inside the walls. Now, behind the door of her childhood home, where her mother’s blood still stains the carpet, it can be difficult to push past the pain.
“But her legacy is going to be that what she created in there: All the magic, all the joy, is never going to go away,” Dorough said. “These memories are never going to go away.”
The shooting
On Christmas Eve, Chris Bukaty, a cousin of Joe Panijan’s, was in town staying with family next door to the Panijans.
While out on a walk that unseasonably warm day, she noticed the Panijans in the window and stopped to say hello.
Pat Panijan, who recently had back surgery, was in good spirits and full of life, she recalled.
She was making plans to buy a new mattress. Looking forward to visiting her granddaughters in Michigan. Eager to sell some of their rental properties in the hopes of a slower retirement. Maybe they’d go back to Croatia soon, she said, as Joe Panijan picked up the phone and started making his way down their contact list, wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
When Pat Panijan mentioned that one of their daughters was moving to Florida, Joe said he’d be fond of moving south.
“No, I’m staying right here,” she said.
“Well, then I’m staying here too,” Joe replied.
It was pretty cute, Bukaty recalled thinking before she headed back down the street at about 7:30 p.m.
Just before 9:30 p.m., Bukaty heard deafening gunshots. She dropped to the ground, crawled to the phone and started calling family to make sure everyone was OK. Then she saw police cars, an ambulance and firetruck pull up in front of the Panijans.
She saw them bring Joe Panijan out to the ambulance first. Then what felt like a long time later, a detective came out and told her Pat Panijan had been killed.
“You could’ve pushed me over with a feather,” she said.
As of Wednesday, police still had no update on a possible suspect in the shooting. They have urged anyone who saw something that night to come forward.
All the family can do is wait for answers. They’re grappling with what to do next. They don’t want their mother’s death to be in vain. They want to help prevent others from dying.
“They’re trying to destroy what’s good, these people,” Dorough said of whomever shot her parents. “But they’re not going to. We’re just going to get even stronger.”
A vigil on Monday evening drew at least 100 people to the street and yard in front of the Panijan’s home. The mayor and police chief of Kansas City, Kansas, were among the crowd.
Joanna Mispagel, another of the Panijan’s daughters, said a friend who came out for the vigil was struck by the sheer number of people standing in the glow of the candlelight.
Pat Panijan used to tell her girls: “Always just show up.”
More than anything, family said, Panijan showed up. Once, when Dorough lost her car keys, her mom drove to where she was living at the University of Kansas to help her find them. Just three years ago she drove by herself to Chicago to surprise Dorough on her birthday. She made the day-long drive with a rocking chair bungeed to the back of her trunk as a gift.
Her daughters took her message to heart, and so did the rest of their community.
The other lesson their mother taught them: Family first.
“That’s how people end up OK,” Dorough said. “That’s how people don’t kill people.”
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 2:30 PM.
