Dramatic soprano and voice teacher Patricia Dowell Scimeca (1950–2013) was born and raised in Garland, Texas. She relocated to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she was a New York District winner and an Eastern Regional finalist twice in the Metropolitan Opera’s annual young singers competition. She also won the Liederkranz Foundation’s Richard Wagner Division Awards Competition and the Geraldine Farrar prize of the San Diego Opera’s Young Artists program. Scimeca created the role of Anne Hutchinson in Richard Owens’ Mary Dyer at its world premiere at New York Lyric Opera in 1979 and the role of Cassandra in Sam Belich’s Trojan Women in New York in 1982. In her later career, she devoted more time to teaching and training promising singers. For OPERA America, she helped guide the design of the Feedback Auditions program and served as a panelist in the inaugural session. She was elected to the National Opera Center Board in spring 2013.