Wow, he knew he was "leaving" for good.

Sounds like he made his choice about how to go out. Good for him. I hope he finds peace.


Bye Pat.
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I'll share a few stories of patteeu just to show everyone how cool he was.

I first saw his name when I was a freshman at college. We were in the same major. It took another couple of years to meet him since we generally didn't start our major-specific courses until our junior year. He was one of the top students in the program, and he was also very well liked and respected. He was a pretty quiet guy - not a rah rah type - but he was welcomed into every social group because he was a genuinely personable and witty fellow.

But here's what made him cool in college: for at least part of his college career he lived in a motel.

Now, I guess I can't give him credit for the idea, but he executed it well. For those of you in your late 50s, you'll remember that we were pretty much the last year of the baby boom and so we had a crowded existence in many respects. When patteeu and I showed up at college, the school didn't want to build a new dorm with the baby bust coming, so they did all sorts of things to find housing for students. At UMR, one of those things was to book up the low-end 1950s motels out on the highway and turn them into dorms. They then ran a bus service to get the students to and from campus. Patteeu got assigned to one of those, so he lived in a classic 1950s motel for at least a year, and I think it was notably longer than that. As a low-caste townie who had to commute from my parents' house, I thought the motel guys had the best of all worlds.

Patteeu and I were very friendly in college, but he had a built-in social group at the motel so we didn't do a lot of social stuff together in those days, even though we seemed to have a lot of common interests. That changed, though, when.....
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You double booked the same hooker?
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Can I help it if we had similar tastes?
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Not if you tell me she was from Estonia.
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See, that's another weird thing. Even though Estonians were the logical choice, he and I both preferred Lithuanians.
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Apparently market research consultants were a thing even in the early '80s.
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So as background, patteeu and I went to the same college with the same major, and we had a lot of similar interests. When we graduated, I was surprised that we also had similar career interests, because we coincidentally got hired by the same company to work in the same department. That's a pretty notable coincidence given that it was a very niched department. So we both moved to St. Louis.

There was a relatively small group of young engineers in our department, while most of the department was 50+. So we tended to hang out together. Patteeu and I were in the wargaming club together, and we played paintball, and we road-tripped to a few Chiefs games together. Without going into detail about it, we also each found ourselves in a situation over the years where we protected the other one from foul play at the hands of others, so we became good friends.

It's funny that he enjoyed debating on CP, because in real life he was incredibly easygoing and mellow. One of my favorite patteeu stories was during our years in St. Louis. He had an apartment and at some point he noticed stuff going missing. Nothing big, just small stuff like change and other things that could easily be overlooked. So he did some sleuthing and eventually discovered that his next door neighbor was climbing over to patteeu's deck from his own and working the back door open while patteeu was at work. He'd steal stuff and then close the door back.

Now, I would've been furious and gone screaming to the police about my missing pocket change. But patteeu just went to the guy and said something like, "Stuff's been disappearing out of my apartment and I've been watching it. If it keeps happening, the police are going to get involved. So let's hope it stops." The guy immediately stopped and patteeu remained on friendly terms with him going forward. I was impressed at how he de-escalated it.

So anyway, we worked together for about five years. We were in the same department, but always in different work groups. For the first few years, we'd usually meet for lunch with the "young people" group in our department. We then both got assigned to a big mega-classified project, but into different work groups. We couldn't visit the other person's desk due to guards and stuff, but we'd meet somewhat regularly for lunch. And that's where the most amusing coincidence happened, when ...
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At that point, I was not enjoying my job at all, and my career prospects were on a road to nowheresville. So I was doing some thinking and one day I met patteeu for lunch, just the two of us. I said, "Hey, I hate to leave you, but I'm about to do something radical. I'm going to quit, and I'm going to go to law school at the University of Texas at Austin."*

He looked at me and grinned. "I've got something to tell you as well. I've decided to quit, and I'm going to go to law school at the University of Texas at Austin."

I cannot overemphasize how freaky that was. Neither of us had ever talked to the other about going to law school. Neither of us had any connection to the University of Texas at Austin. Neither of us had ever even talked about quitting our jobs. But somehow we made exactly the same decision at exactly the same time.

As it turned out, I decided to pursue another degree, but we both moved to Austin and got our graduate degrees together. And then...
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The way he argued, I knew he had to be a lawyer. :-)
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He said he was on diff occasions. Sometimes I think I’m the only one who reads posts.

Even tho I’m right in the end.
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That history lesson on you and patteeu was just what I needed tonight, thank you for sharing that story, RM... he was clearly held in high esteem by everyone that knew him
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Thanks for sharing.
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Sorry to hear this. I thought his leaving forever thread was that he just said all he could say on Chiefs Planet and it was time to move on.
Sounds like many knew him personally and recognized him as a good man. I enjoyed his debating style here on CP.
RIP
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After we got our graduate degrees, we went our separate ways. I moved to Denver and he moved back to his hometown area of Kansas City. He went to work for an IT consulting company, and got assigned to a big project in ... Denver. So we met once or twice when our schedules allowed. But then we fell out of touch for several years.

I started my company and was working alone from home all day, and at some point I found the Star board to talk football. It was a great social outlet for a lone eagle entrepreneur. That led me to CP, and I happily posted there for a couple of years when I got a PM. It said, "I think I know you."

Patteeu and I had coincidentally found CP, and you know the rest.

He was a great guy. Always honorable, always clever, always respectful of others. I think we were destined to be friends because we had this Forrest Gump-like quality of always encountering each other - college, our engineering jobs, grad school, and chiefsplanet. I'm tempted to say that if I had a twin it would've been patteeu, but I don't think that does him justice. He was always moving through life at a higher level, and I was honored to ride with his posse.
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