Cecil "Pat" Patterson

Cecil “Pat” Patterson was born on 8 April, 1930, at the beginning of The Great Depression, in a small town in the coal-country of southeast Kentucky; Heidrick, Kentucky just outside of Barbourville. It’s still a small town, where everyone still knows each other’s first names. When he graduated from Knox Central High School – just barely - and came of age, he went through a few jobs like department store clerk at Goldie’s Department Store in Barbourville where his mother, Lillie Mae Deaton Patterson worked for decades, even installing drive shafts in Edsels in Detroit. And while he was doing okay, he began to realize he needed to do something more with his life. He wanted to see the world.

The Korean War was starting into full swing at the time so, to keep from getting drafted by the Army he and his cousin and their best friend flipped a coin to enlist in either the Air Force or the Navy, because they thought those would be ‘safer’. The coin landed ‘tails’ for Air Force, so they all went in the recruiting station and enlisted. Ironically, even though the coin landed on the Air Force, his first tour of duty was on a boat! He was stationed on an Air Force PT boat in the Sea of Japan, racing to pick up downed US pilots before the North Koreans could get to them, but that’s another great story - of which Pat had many. His 90-year old sister, Mary Irene, told his son last month that joining the Air Force was the best decision Pat could have made back then, saying “Cecil was either heading into the military or heading into jail.” His cousin and friend did their required stint and got out as soon as they could. Pat, on the other hand, was having too much fun, so he ended up serving very proudly for 26 years and three days, always joking, “one of these days I need to decide if I’m going to make this a career or not.” He started out with a desire to see the world and do exciting things, but it quickly became a desire to serve his country and protect the American Way of Life. To Pat that wasn’t a slogan, it was a duty, and he was proud and honored to do it.

When he was waiting for his assignment to technical school after basic training at Lackland AFB, he took a job as a bartender in a bar on the southside of San Antonio. There was a young girl there that did the books for her uncle who was the owner of the bar. The other bartender told the young girl that the new guy really had an eye for her, “but I told him you were engaged”, she said to the young girl. The girl took off her engagement ring and told her friend to go back and tell him she had broken it off, (which she did later that night). Pat made sure his cash drawer didn’t add up correctly by taking a dollar out of it, so the girl would have to call him into the office to find out what happened. Six weeks later, Pat was standing in front of the altar with that young girl, Guadalupe Lucille Velasquez, the woman that was to be his partner, his coach, his teammate, his encourager, his ‘roommate’, his one true love for the next 67 years. You just don’t hear stories like that anymore.

Pat started his military service as a radio operator but soon added another MOS that became his ‘raison d’etre’: he became an ‘In-Flight Refueling Specialist’, better known as a “boom operator”. He served for over 15 years in that MOS, transferring fuel from his tanker aircraft (first KC-97s, then KC-135s) to the needing aircraft of the day: fighter jets over Korea, then over Vietnam, then B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons throughout the Cold War, all while flying over 400 mph in whatever the weather gave you that day. When he was finally grounded, (he technically wasn’t supposed to be able to fly at all because of his limited breathing ability through a broken nose that was never fixed), he became what is affectionally known to Air Force recruits as “the DI”. Coming full circle in his Air Force career, Pat became a Drill Instructor at Lackland Air Force Base for about seven years, finishing his career where he started it. His ability to inspire “compliance” from the recruits moved him from DI to Command First Sergeant with the officers relying on his experience and abilities. He was a man that had seen Air Force combat like few others had at that time. Pat used to smile to himself when officers would see the wings on his chest and salute him first as they crossed paths. They knew where he’d been, and they were rightly very respectful. Pat retired as a First Master Sergeant. He would have made chief, but he preferred to fly than take the courses you needed to get the next stripe. He would always say he preferred the mission over the politics.

But all this success in his professional life could not, unfortunately, help him in his personal life. He was becoming more and more debilitated by his drinking problem. Pat had become an alcoholic. Soon after his retirement from the military, he realized that his drinking was going to be the end of his family and himself. So, with the help of his most devoted advocate and partner, on January 1, 1982, he poured out the beers he had left in the fridge from a long night of New Year’s revelry, and he never intentionally touched another drink of alcohol for the rest of his life. No veterans’ counseling. No AA meetings. No church support groups. Just him saying ‘no more’ and working through the physical and emotional pain with only himself and his wife to help him get that demon behind him. Some of his family would say that this was his greatest accomplishment in his life. In fact, when he called his mother to tell her he had been sober for a year, she broke down on the phone, sobbing that it was the proudest moment of her life. No small words from a woman who herself had quite a life. But again, that’s another story. Pat told one of his sons years later into his sobriety that: “when you can control yourself, you control the world.” And Pat was definitely in control of his world.

After he retired from the military, Pat knocked around again looking for a purpose. Starting in his 50s, he got his associate’s degree, then his bachelor’s degree, then his realtor’s license, then his appraiser’s license, then his broker’s license. He was pretty good at the real estate business out in the Texas Hill Country, but it just didn’t resonate with him. He found his purpose again in a job he took as a part-time gig until he found what he really wanted to do. He became a Floor Manager of Personnel at the department store that was then known as Foley’s. He was responsible for making sure the ‘Associates’ were all doing their job; dressed appropriately, helping customers adequately, and generally behaving correctly. He was Foley’s Drill Sergeant. That part-time job led to another full career, with him becoming the Store Manager for the North Star Foleys (now Macy’s), the smallest yet highest grossing multi-million dollar store of their chain at the time. For years to come after his retirement from Foley’s, folks would see Pat and Lucy at a restaurant and regale Lucy with stories of how he whipped them into shape by making them spit out their gum or go home and change into something more appropriate for work. Sometimes Pat would remember them and sometimes he wouldn’t, but he would always smile and pretend he did, saying “it made you pay more attention to how you presented yourself from then on, didn’t it?” He had a firm, yet charming effect on so many people.

All of Pat’s kids were sure that he would not die of old age, but in a shoot-out in a WalMart parking lot after yelling at someone for not displaying the American Flag on their vehicle correctly. That was a pet-peeve of his: “fly it right or don’t fly it”, he would say. It actually became one of his life’s missions in his retired years, stopping at different restaurants or shops, reminding them that the flag on their flagpole was too ragged to fly or was being displayed incorrectly. He would even offer to buy them a new flag if they wanted – and doing just that on occasion. It just really ticked him off to see the flag being flown wrong. He would tell them, “I knew some good men who died for that flag, the least you could do is fly it right.” Yeah, Pat had a way of cutting right to the point when he wanted to.

One of his other missions in life in retirement was, …put simply: “firewood”. As a young boy in a rural Kentucky coal town, collecting firewood was a daily need, since his house was only heated first by a little pot-bellied stove, then later a meager fireplace. This ‘nascent need for wood’ blossomed into a mission statement in his later life, as his chosen retirement home out in Spring Branch TX had a fireplace that covered an entire wall of the living room. He would stop and ask people if he could haul off any ‘burnable’ wood they were cutting down at their houses, squirreling it away to a piece of property he owned near his and Lucy’s house in Spring Branch. To date, there are probably more than 15 cords of wood out on his ‘little farm’. His family often worried that, if he didn’t die in a Home Depot parking lot firefight, he would cut his leg off with one of his six chainsaws he had ready to fire up at a moment’s notice. He was always a country boy. He prided himself on that.

It must be told that Pat had one other vice which he never got rid of - his love of a Mercedes Benz. While on TDY to Germany as a young sergeant, much to the chagrin of his wife back home with four small kids, he bought a brand new, shiny black four-door 1966 Mercedes Benz 230S and had it shipped back to Bergstrom AFB, where his family was waiting for him in Austin TX. From then on, the officers on every base they were stationed would always stop him and ask him where he got the money to drive a car nicer than theirs, but he would just smile, twist the end of his handlebar mustache (not exactly regulation), and drive on. Later in life he had to let it go to be able to buy cars for his kids, but he never lost his love for the MB Logo. Years later, as the kids moved out of the house, he found an old 1960 190SL that he had to have and again, with her eyes rolling, Lucy let him buy it. He went from that one to a 1959 version of the same model but from then on, it was only the 190SL. It’s still in the garage.

No, Pat didn’t die from a shoot-out or cutting his leg off, he died on 27 July 2021 due to complications from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which migrated from chronic to acute in his last years of life. He was 91 years old. He lived as full a life as a poor boy from Kentucky could live; he did what he wanted, when he wanted, while always loving his family and making sure they knew it – in his own way. He never had a lot of money, but he was one of the richest men on the planet. He rarely told all the stories of his time in the military, but you knew he earned every medal he got – and even some they wouldn’t give him because some of the missions he volunteered for weren’t necessarily ‘official’.

He is survived by his beautiful and loving wife Guadalupe Lucille Velasquez Patterson, together for over 67 years. Lucy mentioned to her kids just a few days ago, “he truly was the love of my life”. And we all knew that without her he would have never become the man he was. He is also survived by his two sisters in Heidrick, KY: Mary Irene Patterson, and Magdalene Lee; his four children – Mark, Jacki, Charlie, and Mike, their spouses, eight grandchildren; three great-grandchildren; three sisters-in-law; seven nieces and nephews; countless friends; and likely many recruits and associates that remember a word of discipline – or encouragement - he gave them at just the right time in their lives that helped shape who they are today.

A few years ago, just before her death, Pat’s mother told his daughter that Pat’s middle name was supposed to be “Dallas”, but it never got on his birth certificate. So, he went through life with no official middle name, not realizing that his mother had predestined him to a life in Texas. I guess he ‘knew’, without really knowing that Texas was to be where he would make a life.

Heaven awaits a hard-working Kentucky boy who became a true Texan, who showed his family that the measure of a man is in his actions, not his words.

A funeral Mass will be held for 1st MSgt Cecil Patterson, USAF Retired, on 11 Aug 2021 at 1200CDT at St. George Maronite Catholic Church on 6070 Babcock Rd, San Antonio TX 78240; viewing begins at 1030CDT with a Rosary to follow at 1130CDT. Military Burial Service with full honors will be held directly following at Fort Sam Houston Cemetery, 1345hrs CDT. A mercy meal will follow back St George Maronite Catholic Church’s Hall where we will remember Pat in videos and stories.