August 28, 1951                       

December 2, 1971

Pat McEntee lived life on the bleeding edge.  Dangerous, fearless, gifted and intelligent, Pat did not waste time on anything he did not like. Parents feared him.  Teachers could not control him.  Artists and scholars knew him, as did the police.  

Pat was the guy in shop class who was finishing up on his inlaid coffee table while you were still butchering three pieces of wood for a bookstand.  He was the kid at scout camp who could make a lean-to shelter just from the description of the counselor.  He was also the kid who got in trouble for cutting down the tree to do it.  

Pat was a real-life Dean Moriarty from Kerouac’s On the Road.  In a fistfight, with one punch he hit a man so hard it picked him up off the ground and he went down face first.  He drove like if there were a tomorrow, he did not want to see it.  He could communicate without talking.  He could converse in the abstract and have it make sense.

Life caught up with Pat and he had to make a choice between jail or “getting help.”  He chose the latter.  For a year he lived in a wilderness environment where the therapy was deprivation and humiliation.  It worked.  They robbed Pat of who he was and he gave up.

 For those who knew him, Pat looms large in the memories of East.

--Dan Brown