Patty McClintock was born in 1930 in Delta Utah in the midst of the Great Depression. Her family owned a small independent farm where there was no clear separation of productive and reproductive labor. Patty’s mother cooked and cleaned in the home while raising three children, she handmade all of the clothes for each family member, and she and provided extra income raising chickens and selling eggs. When the family moved to Hillsboro, Oregon, she worked picking strawberries for extra money. As a young woman she worked as a store clerk at the J.C. Penny department store. She then attended Oregon State University and the University of Washington, where she earned a degree in education.

Tom McClintock was born in Lebanon, Oregon in 1923, the third of four children. His father worked for the railroad so the family moved frequently. For a time, Tom and his brother lived with their grandparents in Long View where they had paper routes and other summer jobs. Tom remembers participating in Boy Scouts and playing a lot of football. Tom’s mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis and only worked for at short time as a telephone operator. Tom enrolled at Oregon State University after graduating from Beaverton High School; he participated in Army Specialized Training Program and served in Europe in World War II. After being wounded he returned to the United States and earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Stanford University, a Masters Degree in History at Columbia State, and a doctorate in history at the University of Washington, where he met Patty. In 1956 he took a position as professor of history at Oregon State University; he was on faculty for forty years in 1956, and he and Patty raised three children.

Patty and Tom were both very involved in the community through church, the PTA, and the League of Women Voters.