Once upon a time, when I was a fairly new licensed amateur radio operator, I heard a conversation on the local radio repeater between a man that I knew (Larry, W9CCL) and a man that I didn't know. I could tell by the tone of the conversation that Larry really respected the man he was talking to. The next day, the man came back on the air and was calling for W9CCL, who wasn't answering. So I did.
He was wending his way back to Chicago from somewhere south of Indy. I talked to him until he was out of range. Two days later, I had a packet of information to join the Salvation Army Team Emergency Network in my mailbox. Turned out that I had been talking to the Director of Emergency Disaster Services for the Metro (Chicago) Division of The Salvation Army, who was also founder and National Director of SATERN, Major Patrick McPherson, WW9E. Pat was an officer in The Salvation Army (TSA), which means he was an ordained Christian minister.
"Major Pat" was smitten with my radio presence and energy. At the time, I was only a Tech, but soon upgraded to a General radio license. When that happened, he started calling me daily on his cell phone. I told him over and over again that I didn't care to see his phone bill at the end of the month, but he had a package that allowed him to call at random. He called every day. We shared personal stories. The purpose of his calls was to work on me to accept the position of SATERN Coordinator for Indiana. I kept saying no. I was still teaching then and felt that I was too busy, but I thanked him for having such faith in my radio enthusiasm.
The first time we met in person was in Remington, IN, somewhat halfway between Indy and Chicago where he was stationed. He had, in the trunk of his car to give to me, a regular solid state radio--so much better than I had for High Frequency--I was floored. It came from his collection of HF radios. You might say it was a bribe, although he never qualified the gift as such. How could I say no to a person who had just given me a $500 radio??? He gave me other radio equipment as well. My fate with SATERN was sealed. This was probably 1999.
The daily calls continued. I started making treks to Elk Grove Village, IL, where Pat and his wife (Carmella) and family lived, to help them paint some walls in the parsonage. (They had not painted a wall in their lives.) We all gelled as friends. Poor Carmella didn't know what hit her.
Every morning, Pat had as his normal routine to go out for breakfast/coffee. Carm never went with him although she was always invited. When I went up for a visit, he and I had breakfast out together, without Carm. If we were both in our respective states, he went out for breakfast alone, but still called me on his way back home. Every day except Sunday. As near as I can figure it, this went on for 17 years.
We became solid friends. We met on HF radio several times a week and talked by phone daily. We also had Internet chat. I drove up to Chicago to visit or to attend meetings, everything from a SATERN manual revision weekend to helping out with disaster work. SATERN paid for me and one of my local friends to attend a TSA conference in Atlanta, GA, and teach a 2-day crash course for radio license testing. We manned SATERN booths at hamfests together, then started doing the Dayton Hamvention (a yearly convention in Ohio) together. We became the Bobbsey Twins of amateur radio. On the air or at hamfests, people would come to me to find him, and to him in order to find me. He directed. I had his back. When returning from any TSA trip east, he would often detour through Indy just to stop and visit. When I was recuperating from brain surgery in a hospital in Peoria, IL, in walked Patrick. I was happy but not surprised to see him. That's just the sort of thing that Pat did. He drove down from Chicago just to see me in the hospital.
I know there were people who thought Pat and I had "something going" on the side. We did: close personal friendship. Nothing more. Nothing less. You can't talk to someone on the phone for 30-45 minutes, six days a week for 17 years, and not know them. In some cases, familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. In my case, familiarity with Pat bred understanding. I came to know that the man was full of anxiety. The cause was a touch of OCD. He was stressed if things were out of order or out of place. He forbade anyone to touch his radios for fear of scratching them. Even he couldn't touch the buttons on the radios without covering his finger with a handkerchief. Any microscopic mark or scuff on his radios or his car were cause for days of fretting over them. He worried about every little ache or pain or mark on his body. In the last couple of years, the nurses and doctors in the ER at the hospital in Michigan (where he and his wife retired to) knew him by name.
Aside from that, what he sought in relationships was love, acceptance, and respect. He was honest to a fault, had an enormous sense of what was right (which sometimes put him on the outs because he was unable to play internal politics with TSA), and was mischievous beyond what one would think of as appropriate for a minister. (I once told him that it was a good thing he'd been called to the ministry because he would have been in sooo much trouble if he hadn't!) In the end, he was convinced that he wasn't getting his "due" where SATERN was concerned and that he had been somewhat snubbed in treatment by TSA. He would get on those subjects and talk himself into a terrible funk, unable to let go of the past. I finally had to ban certain topics from our daily conversations in order to protect him from working himself into a stew about things gone by. He was retired, for Pete's sake! Time to move on, Patrick! I began to see my role as his friend just to listen and reassure. Most of the time, I couldn't get a word in edgewise, anyway!
Pat needed constant reassurance that he would be okay, especially where his health was concerned. He would ask me, "Do you think I'll get through this?" I always answered in the affirmative. Lately, however, I began to say, "I'm no doctor. I don't know. But you have a dermatologist, a urologist, a nephrologist, a cardiologist, and a pulmonologist. There isn't a single organ in your body that hasn't been scoped, scanned, operated on, poked, prodded, or otherwise messed with, except your brain, so I'd think that you are on top of the game." Still, I thought it profoundly unfair that this man, who never touched a drop of alcohol or smoked a single cigarette in the entire 70 years of his life should be suffering from emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis...and kidney problems.
I talked to Pat on the phone, as usual, on Friday, May 13th. He had been in the hospital for a few days while the doctors tried to figure out why his BP would drop dangerously low and he would pass out when up and about. He had already been on home oxygen for a number of months--something he hated but realized he truly needed. There was some talk of a heart/lung transplant, but it was only just talk. I don't think anyone quite knew what was wrong, but when I talked to him that day, he sounded really upbeat and hopeful. The doctors had finally begun talking to each other. They had decided to wean him off of some medications that were known to counteract each other as well as cause light-headedness. He said he felt better than he had in a long time. I was encouraged. When we hung up, it was "Talk to you later. I love you."
Still, I woke up two days before this, writing a eulogy for Pat in my mind. Strange. He had jokingly said something to me about hoping I'd come to his funeral, when it happened...and I jokingly said back, "I'll miss you."
I waited for his call on Saturday morning, but it was getting later than usual. Then I began to see things on Facebook from family that sounded ominous. His son-in-law, who is Mexican, had posted something in Spanish. I don't know Spanish, but I do know French, and enough words in both languages are similar that I said to myself, "Danny is saying that Patrick has died. This can't be." Just minutes later, I began to see FB posts from Pat's children, asking for prayer. I begged his daughter, Tara, to tell me that what I was reading wasn't true...but sadly, it was.
I'll spare the gory details. Suffice it to say that Pat had gotten up, unattended, to go to the bathroom or something and had passed out. The nurses found him on the floor awhile later, resuscitating him twice. By the time Carmella got there, they were doing chest compressions on Pat...but he was gone.
Gone? How gone? Where gone? How can a legend die?? Major Pat, WW9E, SK. (Silent Key in radio jargon.) It wasn't supposed to happen this way. When my dog died a horrible death in a hot car in the care of a person who knew better, I went berserk. When my grandmother died, I was resigned. When my grandfather died, I was emboldened. When my mother died, I went numb. When my father died, I was accepting. I've had friends die before...but none quite like this. My brain couldn't take it all in. I guess denial set in. How could someone so much a part of my solitary life actually die without my permission??
I pulled myself together and drove to Michigan to attend Pat's funeral. My next blog post will be about that adventure. It was the last thing I could do for my friend.
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