My Father In Law

My Father In Law, Dick Patterson, passed away a week ago Friday morning.

He had not been doing well since he suffered a debilitating stroke, February 2016, 3 years ago.  He was paralyzed on one side, and had cognitive impairment. (See note 3)  Since then, he has been a shadow of the man we always knew.  But he seemed happy, cheerful even, and content being well cared for by Cleo and the caregivers at The Palms, the retirement home where they moved after the stroke.

In-laws can be a sensitive issue for some people, but my in-laws were not at all like any stereotype.

Dick has always been much more to me than just my wife's father.

I actually knew Dick as my Sunday School teacher, back when Lyn was just the oldest of his young kids years before I had any designs on his daughter.  And he was a really good Sunday School teacher, from whom I learned not just about the Bible, but about how to read, study, examine, reason from, and understand the Bible.  He had a very rational, engineer's approach to reasoning from the Bible.  His approach was always to go to the Bible itself to understand it, not to depend primarily on commentaries or other people's answers.  His example was that you and I can understand it for ourselves if we just look at it rationally.  That approach has always stayed with me.

He was our church youth group leader for many years while I was a teenager and young man, well before I started courting his daughter..  As always, he was cool, calm, organized, efficient, but I think the key thing was, he listened, made sure to get participation, didn't lecture, he was a master at leading a discussion, to give everyone a chance to speak. And shy Lyn mostly sat there annoyed at listening to me, my brother, and Dick go on and on discussing things.  She still hates "discussion."

I guess it's no coincidence that Dick and my father were both engineers, as I too became:  I had two great examples to follow, totally different in many ways.  Dick was a Cal Tech graduate Civil engineer. My dad had a two year degree from LA City College, and was a mostly self-educated Mechanical engineer.  But Dick was very much into self teaching also.  My dad was a hoarder.  Dick was an extreme thrower.  My dad was a shy introvert.  Dick was a social leader, always organizing groups, doing things in groups. The differences attracted me, though, personally, I am much more like my dad. (I became both Civil and Mechanical engineer, and Electrical too)

Dick and his family were part of a group of families that went camping together, and invited us to join them, which we sometimes did:  Easter break on the beach in Baja.

Dick was always a leader in our church.  When I first knew him, they were in a little congregation in San Gabriel.  Then they joined ours in Eagle Rock, where he became one of the most active, enthusiastic, and consistent members, a teacher, speaker, motivator, and leader.  He encouraged me in many ways, by example, as well as by words.

When I started going with Lyn, Dick and Cleo welcomed me as part of their family, and always made me feel at home in their home.

After Lyn and I got married, Dick helped me get my first real engineering job, at Bechtel, where he was a project manager.  There, he continued to serve as a role model and mentor.  He encouraged me to join Bechtel's lunchtime Toastmaster's Club, which really gave a boost to my public speaking confidence, and also enabled me to talk to managers as equals, a real eye opening experience for a young engineer.

I have to tell the story of the first time I saw his office at Bechtel.  I ventured up to his executive floor of the Bechtel building and found his office, but it was practically vacant.  He was out at the moment, but I thought he must have moved to a different office, as there was no sign of anyone working there.  There was a bare desk, with nothing on it, a chair, a couple of guest chairs, and an equally bare credenza, with I think one thin binder. No trinkets. Not one piece of paper visible.  That was Dick:  Totally organized, orderly, totally self disciplined. (see note 1)  Some might think him OCD, but that would imply an irrational compulsion, and Dick was always totally rational.

Cleo used to joke that Dick would discard anything that wasn't in use, so she had to stay active, or Dick might throw her away.  No real danger of that.

After Lyn I were married, we continued to camp together as families, and with the group of friends.  Campfire singing was a grand tradition in that group, and Dick was the consummate campfire song leader.  He couldn't carry a tune with a bucket, but he sure could lead campfire singing.

He was also a very good pianist, despite his tin ear.  He applied himself with his usual orderly self-disciplined approach that overcame his unnatural relationship with musicality.

Dick was an experienced Sierra packer. His mother had lived in the San Joaquin Valley and had hiked in the Sierras. Dick's first job out of Cal Tech was with the LADWP in Independence in the eastern Sierra, where he packed with Cleo after they married. He helped lead Boy Scout pack trips.

He led my first backpacking venture, with Lyn pregnant with Evan, from South Lake, over Bishop Pass, to Grouse Meadows. I got altitude nausea; Rained most nights; but I loved it. With two small children, we didn't go again, until:

When our children were old enough to backpack, he became our llama leader.  Lyn and Dick came up with a plan to borrow pack llamas from our mutual friends, the Barratts, who raised them.  Dick helped train the llamas, and was our lead llama wrangler and guide.

For about ten or twelve summers, we spent a week or two hiking the high Sierra.  We hiked most of the John Muir Trail in bits and pieces.  I think I may still have one of Dick's packing checklists in my files: Always spare and orderly.  He was still leading llama packing trips in his 70s, even after a recalcitrant llama dislocated Dick's shoulder in the back country and he had to be helicoptered out.

In 1985, I had occasion to work with Dick on a small engineering project:  Our church building in Tujunga which we had bought in 1984, was under an upgrade order from the City of Los Angeles as an unreinforced masonry building.  I had some experience with testing firms in the area, and hired one of them to test the strength of the mortar.  Dick did the engineering to design seismic upgrades to the building. I think he did a very clever job of finding simple minimalist solutions. (see note 2)

He retired from Bechtel, but Dick was never idle.  He entered a new phase of his engineering career, doing residential structural engineering.  He got involved after the 1994 Northridge earthquake as a favor to a church member who was a mason and had requests to rebuild brick chimneys.  Dick, in his usual brilliant methodical way, figured his way through LA City Building and Safety bureaucracy to get plans approved. I think he was one of very few engineers getting masonry chimneys approved in Los Angeles.  Later, he broadened his private practice to all residential work.  I don't think he really did it for the money. He mostly just enjoyed helping people and doing engineering.  He never really charged what he was worth.  He said it was just vacation money. (See note 4) He was still doing residential engineering at age 88 the day he suffered a stroke, which tragically took away the ability to move from one of the most active people I have known, and took away the keen mind from one of the most brilliant men I have known.

Dick was a hard act to follow. Lyn idolized him. Living up to his standard was a challenge.  The attempt made me a better person.

What the stroke did not take away was Dick's personality, which was always kind, loving, optimistic, ever cheerful, and always interested in and concerned about others. He remained organized, concerned about punctuality, even when he couldn't really tell time. Still mentally organizing things into lists, even when, sadly, he couldn't remember what the things were.  He was way more to me than a father-in-law.  He was a force of nature (or dare I say, a force of God) that I was blessed to have in my life. I loved him dearly.

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Note 1)  Whenever I told this story in Dick's presence, he would explain that early in his career, he took a management class, which taught that a desk was for paper to flow across, not to store paper.  I'm sure however that thousands of people took that class, but I doubt that any of the others succeeded in practicing that as well as Dick.  I'm not sure he even needed that lesson.  If anything, it just reinforced his natural inclination.  I tried to follow that lesson many times, and really worked at it, but it's just not me.  I simply cannot do that.

Note 2)  Later on in my career, I went to UCLA, and became responsible for technical oversight of their very extensive seismic renovation program.  They hired some very sophisticated top structural engineering firms, with PhD engineers, and cutting edge computer analysis, to do what Dick did with paper and pencil.  I think his solutions may have lacked some of the cutting edge sophistication, but I concluded that we could have paid more than the construction cost in engineering fees, and not gotten a more suitable design.

(Note 3)  It is frustrating and sad that his stroke was very preventable. It was due to clogged carotid arteries in his neck, which can be checked very easily. After the stroke, when it was too late, he had surgery to clean them. If he had that surgery before the stroke, he could still be working today.  Given that he had heart surgery some years ago, it's hard to imagine why that was not checked before.  Get your arteries checked, before it's too late.

(Note 4) Dick never bothered with professional liability insurance, which some may have thought unwise, but Dick just preferred to do things right and keep his clients more than satisfied. I can't imagine anyone wanting to sue him.

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In Dick's honor, I feel the need to add an enumerated summary list, outlining Richard Patterson as I knew him.

1. A man of undoubting faith in the God of the Bible, who read the Bible every day, using the Bible Companion chart, perhaps reading the Old Testament 80 times through, and the New Testament 160 times. Who lived his faith, and practiced what he preached. Shared his faith with anyone who was interested, but never forced it where it was unwelcome.
2. A leader in all that he did, faith, work, play.  A teacher, example, mentor.
3. Consummately organized and self disciplined. He planned his work, and worked the plan. He made rules for himself, and followed those rules. Everything he did was organized. THE most organized person I have ever known.
4. An executive, who managed people, organized and delegated work, leveraged his effort to get things done, efficiently, and effectively. Listened, learned, applied it to the job. Got consensus. Made decisions, and then moved forward.
5. A brilliant engineer, who could do most anything he set his mind to.
6. Loved nature, walking, hiking, camping, fishing, the Sierras, and knew them, and shared that love and knowledge with many.
7. Liked tradition, order, there is a way things ought to be done. Do it that way. But surprisingly flexible: Could be persuaded that traditions need changing, sometimes.
8. Loved to compete.  He entered a contest to do his very best, which was usually good enough to win. Played as hard as he worked. Anything he did, he did his best.
9. A social person, who liked groups of all sorts. Liked to bring people together. Not naturally charismatic, but made up for that by his genuine interest in others, and by organized effort to put that concern into action.
10. Not by any means perfect; could be annoying in his ordered efficiency and decisiveness.
11. A kind and understanding Family man, and Family was inclusive. For all his self-discipline, he understood that others were not like him, and enjoyed people as they were.
12. Had an impressive ability to avoid and ignore drama and bickering, to cut through all that and just get on with getting things done.
13. Generous with his time and energy. Happy to be active and useful in any way he could.