The Truth About Pat

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 30, 2008


Allow me to clear up a few misconceptions about Pat Morley. I would have done this sooner, but Patrick, as I always referred to him, out of honor and respect and because I didn’t know his given name was actually Thomas, would not permit it, out of pure Irish stubborn humility and dignity. If people want to believe things about me that aren’t true, he would have said, I can only hope they spell my name right when they do.

But now Patrick is gone, and he can’t stop me. Thus:

It is not true that the Chester County Commissioners built the Courthouse Annex in 1892 so that Patrick would have a place to sit and talk with his fellow tipstaffs. Truth be told, the building was already 28 years old when Patrick entered the world in West Chester’s Riggtown neighborhood, so the timing is off.

But he was as central to the Annex as the marble on its walls, and nowhere near as cold. As a new reporter to the courthouse in the early 1990s, I thought of the lobby outside Courtroom Two as Patrick’s living room away from home. He populated it as if he had always been there, and always would be.

It is not true that everyone liked Patrick. Because he rarely left West Chester — living outside the borough’s confines for only four of his 88 years — he did not give all the people in the world he never met a chance to get to know him and, ipso facto, like him. But those who did cross his path — and whom he would not allow to wander off without a handshake and a quick wink — did.

When you think of how many people today hate one another, and how they wear that hatred like a badge of honor, it seems impossible that someone as amiable and kind as Patrick could have existed. But I can attest that he did.

It is not true that Patrick loved his wife, Catherine, his entire life. He did not, in fact, come across her until he was 26, so that would not have been possible. But I have it on good counsel that he did love her from the moment in the spring of 1946 when he spotted her at the Eagles Club in West Chester.

I can also report in good faith that their life together started with one of the most romantic gestures I have ever heard of. Arriving late for their first date, Patrick saw Catherine get on a transit bus bound for her home in Downingtown. Realizing that opportunity lost is fate never regained, he hopped in his car and chased the bus down on Route 322, passed it and waited for it to stop. When it did, he got out of his car, Catherine stepped off the bus, and two sons, two daughters, two sons-in-law, two daughters-in-law, seven grandsons, six granddaughters and two great-granddaughters later, they still smiled when they saw each other.

Finally, it is not true that Patrick’s funeral was the largest seen in St. Agnes Church. Nor was it the smallest. But it may hold the record for attendees who believed they were singularly special in the departed’s eyes.

The service reminded me of what actress Ruth Gordon said at the funeral of the once famous writer and broadcaster Alexander Wollcott in 1943. “I was Aleck’s best friend,” she told a stunned crowd. “As, I suspect, were all of you.”

Thomas J. “Pat” Morley. Born Feb. 7, 1920. Died March 21, 2008. Rest in peace.