An Ode to Big Al Patterson

Sometime around the year nineteen hundred and ninety-nine I met a young lass named Ashley Patterson, and as the sparks began to fly I knew eventually I’d get to the classic ritual of meeting her family.  Ash grew up in Yakima, and I believe it was shortly after she and I did a pretty extended trip to India that we went to Yakima for Christmas, and I met the fam.  At the time I remember being a little nervous about meeting her dad; Meeting The Parents is of course a bit of a cliche and a rite of passage and something I shouldn’t have worried about at the sophisticated age of 35, but I’d heard so much about him that it was a bit intimidating.   However, upon meeting Ash’s larger than life figure of a dad, my concerns were alleviated immediately. 

Al came from humble beginnings; he was born to Irish immigrants who  – like the zillions of immigrants before and after them  – came to America for a new life.  His dad came first, established a career as a railroad engineer and a home for his family in Columbus, Ohio, then went back to Ireland for his wife and their new baby and returned.  Al and his two older brothers had the typical midwestern youth of school and a bit of harmless mischief but were held somewhat in check by pretty stern parents. 

Ultimately all three of the lads took their parents’ admonitions to work hard and have a lot of integrity to go to Ohio State for undergrad and then med school to become doctors; elder Jim did internal medicine and Al and brother Will used their propensity for tinkering with things to become orthopedic surgeons, where they could tinker with people’s bones and get paid for it.  

Whilst at OSU Al met Deb, they sparked up a relationship and soon enough they got hitched, and Deb balanced being a nurse, raising Ashley and her older brother Andy, and chased Al around as his medical career progressed, from putting crashed flyboys back to together at the Navy operations at China Lake (the Mojave Desert of SoCal), Wisconsin (where Ash was born) Wenatchee, Washington, and ultimately the other Washington fruit town of Yakima, Washington.  

Despite being pretty barren in the SoCal desert, both Al and Deb got enough of a taste of the West to put down their roots there, and quickly started lapping it up: skiing at White Pass and Mission Ridge ski resorts (Midwesterners who take up skiing are usually the most enthusiastic!)

and they both got into running rivers, which was much less common in the mid-70’s than it is today. The rafts (for Al) were all “bucket” boats (ie not self-bailing) with rudimentary frames and heavy oars, and the kayaks (for Deb) were long, skinny, difficult to turn, and not-very-rock-worthy fiberglass.  And they dragged their kids down the rivers as well!  Yakima has the Yakima and Tieton rivers close by, which the Family Patterson used for “training”, but they were typically gallivanting off to do the Main Salmon, Lower Salmon, John Day, Deschutes, Grand Ronde, and other long rivers around the West, packing them in between his shifts putting skiers and others back together.  

Al still loved the Midwest and had lots of pals from his years there, and he wanted to figure out a way to blend his med school roots and his new love for the West, so he and a couple of other alumni of his residency program (Ben McAdams and the even-Bigger Al Damshroeder) formed the Sierra-Cascade Trauma Society; a group of docs who got together annually in western ski resort towns for a week of skiing and good times – I mean, seminars and thoughtful discussions and presentations about treatment of winter snowsports injuries and beyond.  I was fortunate enough to be able to have a couple of dinners with the Sierra-Cascade trauma folks in my early Patterson days, and was so impressed at these great folks who loved to talk about the benefits of anterior vs posterior insertion of the new artificial hips as much as enjoying the mountains and skiing and the many Coors Lights that bridged those activities.  And Al was always The King holding forth:  not only were his knowledge and skills clearly highly respected by these in-turn highly-skilled docs, but his aw-shucks manner, enthusiasm for everything from restoring old cars to woodworking to cycling and skiing and rivers and trips and fabulous sense of humor made him the natural ringleader for this impressive crew.  

By this time Al and Deb had gone their separate ways, but it didn’t take long for a lovely young lady named Connie to get seduced by the allure of the Sierra-Cascadians in her own desires to both enjoy the open spaces of the West and practice medicine, and Al and Connie were married at Trail Creek Pass above Sun Valley, not surprisingly one of the favorite haunts of the Sierra-Cascadians (probably because the Pattersons loved their annual late-winter trips from Yakima to Sun Valley that they bought a condo there in the early 80’s, so the annual meetings were common there!).  

But of course, what you do is only a small part of who you are, and though Big Al did a lot of things that certainly defined him, it was his integrity, self-deprecating humor (he most-often referred to himself as a “Gomer”; a reference to Gomer Pyle), and values that earned him the respect of all who knew him.  Despite the fact that surgeons typically are the Masters of Their Domain and can sometimes carry that attitude into real life, it was honestly difficult to imagine him being anything other than being a pretty humble, funny, and pretty fundamental guy.  He far preferred burgers and pints to fancy dinners and wine, his standard uniform was Levis and a collared shirt., I was sorta horrified to see that his main hiking shoes were about 17 year old Nike ACG’s and had to talk him into some new shoes (“Hey, these are pretty comfortable!”) and the fanciest car he had was a new beige Forester (which, of course, still lives on) and lamented ever getting rid of “Joey”, his old standard transmission Suburban that delivered him and his family and pals to many dusty river put ins.  He was an avid golfer and a longtime member of the Yakima Country Club, who loved all his golf pals and forged a vast number of great friendships there.

A few quick memorable Al experiences to share:

Not too long after we met I had the good fortune to be able to invite Al on a private Grand Canyon river trip with a bunch of friends.  Despite the fact that he was recently retired and had the time, he didn’t want to leave Connie for that long, so he decided to hike out at Phantom Ranch.  No small feat: the South Kaibab trail goes up almost 5000 feet in 7 miles, and Al was always way more basketball and golf than aerobic trail machine.  But he trained by doing laps on the relatively diminutive Pilot Butte on the outskirts of his new hometown of Bend that rises nearly…..500 feet above town.  But he was diligent and got himself fit enough to hike out of the GC no problem. 

On that trip I brought down a bottle of Irish whiskey I’d bought in ye olde country on a family reunion earlier that year, and on the first night along the river I busted it out and shared a wee dram (one of his favorite terms) with him.  “Tom, there ain’t enough O’s in smoooooth” inhis deep, sultry voice.  

Also on that trip he left his sleeping bag and other gear for another pal who hiked in to use. In that gear he left a small note with advice, which included “Never waste wood” and “never trust a fart” among other aphorisms to a peer of ours he’d never met! 

I mentioned the family reunion.  Al and his brothers were always convinced that all of their success was due to the influence of their parents, and the brothers themselves were proud and pleased enough with their own respective offspring that they shared organizing semi-annual family reunions at great places that held meaning for their family.  He was always the master of ceremonies of these reunions, whether being deferential to the ancient Irish Aunt Maude or making his Irish step-cousins-in-laws feel welcome in the wilds of Montana or wherever that summer’s reunion was.  And I remember seeing Al and brother Will being so excited when one of the grandkids fell off a ladder and broke his arm; let the orthopods take care of this!

We also did the Salt River, a fun and beautiful river east of Phoenix that had long been on his list.  He rowed that one, and all the kayakers took great pleasure in watching Al deftly maneuver the raft between the rocks in super clean runs through the medium-volume class 3/4 rapids as the younger raft captain bucks bounced of rock after rock.  And when one of the rafts suffered a major slice in the floor from one of said rocks….once again, put the surgeons on that one to sew it up perfectly!

As it became apparent that Al’s memory was slipping and Alzheimers was beginning its awful progression, Ashley was determined to get him on the river one more time.  We were able to get him to the John Day river to hang with our pal Pete Rodgers and Al’’s pal (and Pete’s dad) Jim Rodgers, and not only did Pete wrassle up a couple of rafts for floating the JD and slaying small-mouth bass, we also stayed at a cool riverside ranch previously owned by Jane Kirkpatrick.    After a day or two Al got a little twitchy about leaving Connie for too long and announced he was going to head home early, which wasn’t really going to work for the crew, nor for him.  So at the end of the day after sort of a goodbye beer Ashley simply said: “hey dad, how about another Coors here on the porch while we chat some more and watch the river go by!” He of course could not pass that up, and the situation was solved!

In the fall of 2020 with Covid raging and Yakima enveloped in forest fire smoke Ashley and I spent some time in Yakima helping Al and Connie pack up their house in preparation to move to an assisted living facility; another rite of passage that is almost always a tough one.  After going for a nice ride on the Yakima River bike path we ended up we ended up at a brew pub that was still open and as we sat down a woman exclaimed “Doctor Patterson!” and it turned out to be one of his nurses from back in the day.  She clearly loved him and told him over and over how great it was to work alongside him.  We weren’t sure he even remembered her, but he always faked his memory loss very well, and thus took in and returned the praise graciously.  It was fun for Ash and me to see that exchange.

I also remember telling him that same day that a lot of folks felt 2020 was a year to forget, and that he had a leg up on them with a memory-ailment. It was a big of a risky “joke” on my part, but as anticipated he thought it was hilarious.

Even in the deepest throes of Alzheimers a few years later Al had an oft-repeated mantra:  “You just gotta keep going. Keep doin’ it all, as much as you can.”  He lived it both early and late in his life; in the early days of the care facility in SLC he constantly gave the caregivers fits because he was always on the move around the zone.  in mid-May Big Al quietly moved on to always-flowing trout-laden creeks and endless fairways, after indeed just keepin’ on goin’ and doin’ it all for his whole life.  Al Patterson was great inspiration to all who knew him and will be missed.