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.

My Next Job

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008

The matter of my retirement occurred to me the other day when I sat looking at the line up of Chester County Common Pleas Court judges during a swearing in ceremony in stately Courtroom One at the courthouse for their newest member, David Bortner.

One of these days, I say to myself, I am going to be forced to give up this newspaper dodge I’ve been engaged in since the late days of the Carter Administration and find something useful to do. One of these days either Chelsea Clinton or Jenna Bush is going to be President of the United States, and the sublime will have sunk to the ridiculous so far so that reporting the news won’t be half as stimulating as just making it up, and I’m going to have to find another way to occupy my time and/or mental capabilities.

What better job, I thought, than Court Tipstaff.

All those folks sitting in Courtroom One wearing their black robes would be hard pressed to admit it, since they’re constantly having people stand up for them when they do nothing more than enter a room, but in general I’d say the Court Tipstaff is the central figure in any courtroom in Chester County. They may not look like it sometimes, but the power and influence they hold is incalculable.

Take a for instance.

I’m sitting in Courtroom Seven a few days ago waiting for something to happen. That’s what we do at the courthouse, mostly: wait. There’s me, a court clerk, a court stenographer, a deputy sheriff or two, and Al the Tipstaff. Otherwise, it’s an empty courtroom.

So who walks out from his chambers but Judge Anthony Sarcione, who by my estimation is the only currently sitting jurist in Chester County who has ever ridden a surfboard, unless there’s a side to Judge Robert Shenkin that I haven’t been exposed to. Anyway, Judge Sarcione walks out of his chambers, strides purposefully to his bench, and looks out on the courtroom to see…

“What? No attorneys?” he says, disappointedly, to no one in particular.

Now, a judge on a bench without any attorneys in the room is a lost cause. It’s a boat without a sail, a gun without bullets, a pitcher without a batter. There’s no one to squint at in confusion, there’s no one to argue with in derision, there’s no one to overrule, for heavens sake. So there stood Judge Sarcione, ready to hang ten on the Big Kahuna Wave of res judica, so to speak, and the only one looking back at him from the audience is me. And I’m nowhere near qualified for him to hold in contempt, at least in a legal way.

Al the Tipstaff to the rescue.

Minutes later, there are not one but two attorneys in the courtroom, just aching to tell Judge Sarcione about this or that aspect of their case, meet with him at sidebar, call him “Your Honor,” use words like “colloquy” without chuckling, and ask to be excused when they leave the courtroom. All was right, God was in his Heaven, and we owe it all to Al the Tipstaff.

That’s what I want, real power. And the chance to say, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” in public.