by Tom Smerk
July, 2008

I met Patrick in March of 1975 when I began dating his mom, Margaret, who goes by the name of Peggy. At first, I was surprised to learn that my new love interest had a five-year-old son, but I accepted the fact because it was something that couldn’t be changed. It was obvious that Peggy loved her son very much and thought highly of him. Once I began to know more about Peggy and Patrick, it was obvious that she had done an excellent job raising him without a father. Peggy had a strong-willed mother, and that no doubt added to his good moral upbringing. Patrick at five-years-old was happy, sharp, easy to talk to and willing to learn. 

Peggy and I were married later that year, in October, and we all moved in to a local apartment. We both worked, so Patrick was taken to his grandmother’s house and picked up after work. I can’t remember if it was Christmas 1975 or perhaps it was the following year, but I remember one Christmas Eve staying up late assembling a bicycle. This was an important indoctrination into becoming a father! When he received the bicycle, it had training wheels on it. We were as anxious for him to try it out as he was to ride it. December in Pennsylvania always includes a lot of snow. We found a clear path between the snow banks where he could try out the bicycle. We took some photos. This was an early memory of Patrick that stayed with me to this day. 

Patrick’s first sister was born in December 1976. I don’t recall that there was any jealousy on Patrick’s part when it came to sharing our affections. Pat always seemed to be close to Melody as they were growing up because they grew up together. Our other children were born in 1980 and 1985. 

We took a family vacation in 1977 (Melody stayed behind because she was so young) to see the sights in the western part of the country. We visited the plains states, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California, and returned through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Upon returning home, the local economy began to take a serious downturn and I wasn’t able to earn enough money selling cars because the local population consisted of mostly coal miners, and they were in the middle of a two year strike that ended up in many of the mines being closed and a lot of miners losing their jobs. When I first began work as a Ford salesman, there were a lot of sales to be made because the young men would graduate from high school, get a job working in the coal mines, and have a lot of money to spend on fancy 4-wheel drive pickup trucks. I tried self-employment, working from home teaching guitar lessons and repairing musical instruments. By this time, Patrick was in elementary school and Peggy was still working at the local hospital as a laboratory assistant, so I was left at home during the day to take care of our baby, Melody. This venture also failed because the local residents did not have any money to support the luxury of musical entertainment. Our little town of Spangler, Pennsylvania began to look like one of those pictures in a history book of a poor rural Appalachian village! 

We thought about the places we had visited on our trip and we did some research and decided that California was a land of opportunity for a musician such as me, and also the weather was a heck of a lot better! Peggy and I set out for California in 1978 to check out a number of employment possibilities that I had written down in a list that ran between San Francisco and San Diego. When we arrived in San Diego, I joined a 13-piece rock band, and we left our Ford camper van and flew home to rent a moving truck and relocate to the San Diego area. 

Another one of my fond memories of Patrick as a child was our trip from Pennsylvania to California. Peggy drove her car and took care of Melody, and Patrick rode in the big moving truck with me. We had a lot of miles to chat with one another and to bond. Patrick was well behaved during the trip, and it was an enjoyable experience for us both. 

When we arrived in California, the band I had joined had already broken up, so I took a job at something I new how to do, selling cars at a Dodge dealership. We lived in an apartment in El Cajon, a suburb of San Diego. We later moved into a house when Peggy was expecting our third child, Catherine. 

Patrick did so well through elementary school that he was able to enter an honors program in junior high school and attend a special campus in a nice area of town. It was around this time that we realized that Pat had a brilliant mind, and we felt that he had a chance for a good future. 

Our third child, Georgette, was born in 1985. Another girl! I suppose by this time I was trying to be better friends with Patrick because we were the only men in an all girl family! 

When Patrick entered high school, he went to a public high school near where we lived in El Cajon. During his high school years, we moved to another town, Spring Valley, which was in a different school district. The move was necessary because we were taking care of Peggy’s mother her handicapped sister, which we did until her mother died in 1987 and her sister’s death in 2003. By then, Patrick was old enough to drive, but we couldn’t afford to buy him a car because Peggy had given up full-time work after we left Pennsylvania and I was still working in retail sales, in a music store, and earned very little money compared to the rising costs of living in California. We arrived at a compromise and bought Pat a moped, a nice German-made Kriedler that looked like a little motorcycle. This is yet another fond memory I have of Patrick growing up, thinking of him riding that moped along the side of the road for about 12 miles each way to-and-from school, in the rain and in the hot sun. He seemed to enjoy the ride because most of the time this was a pleasant form of transportation, but I always feel sorry that we couldn’t have given him a car at the time. In fact, none of our children were given a car when they reached driving age. They all had to wait until they were working and then bought their own cars. I have the same regrets for each of them. 

By this time, Patrick was becoming interested in music and rock bands, and I was very happy to share a love of music with him because I have been playing music since I was 12 years old, and have been playing in bands since 1965. I stopped liking new music during the `70’s, but Pat tried to keep me up to date by sharing songs with me by bands such as “Duran Duran” and “Frankie Goes To Hollywood.” 

Pat would bring some high school friends home to visit. His friends seemed so much different from him. I remember this goth girl he was good friends with. She always wore white pancake makeup and black clothing and looked like some sort of a grim reaper! I think he somehow felt sorry for her and was trying to keep her from hurting herself because she was such a good friend. About this time, I began to realize that high school was a lot different from when I went to school. There were many cliques, culture separation with a lot of Black, Mexican and Asian populations, and status separation between the rich, the middle-class and the poor. It was hard to fit in and be accepted unless you were part of one of these elements, which Patrick was not. I imagine that this was a difficult time in Patrick’s life because he was becoming moody and distant, a big difference from the bright, happy child that we had raised. 

When Patrick was ready to graduate from high school, it was obvious that he would do well in college, but we were still financially unable to pay for college tuition, so we suggested that he look into joining a branch of the military because they offered college classes both during and after active service. We also felt that the military might be able to do something positive for Pat’s moodiness and negativity. I’m sure that that was not high on the list of what Pat wanted to do for the rest of his life, but he must have seen some opportunity there because he enlisted in the Navy during his senior year of high school and entered basic training shortly after graduation. 

Peggy and I were sad to see him go because he was our first child to grow up and leave home. Even though we had our three daughters to keep up company, there was still sadness about having him away from home. Peggy missed him vary much during this time because he was her “first born,” a position that holds a special place in a mother’s heart. 

Shortly after that, I was finally able to get a good job and began teaching music in the Continuing Education division of the San Diego Community College District. I later switched to teaching computer business applications and obtained a full-time job at the same school. I also took a second, part-time job teaching at Grossmont College. We were then able to buy our first house, a four bedroom unit in the city of San Diego.

I remember when Patrick came home to visit when he had leave, he would play for me this new type of music he was very fond of. He called it drums-and-bass. I listened to it, but I never could understand its attraction. This is my first memory of beginning to “feel old.” During one of his visits, we all took a family vacation to Las Vegas. I don’t think Melody was there, she had joined the Army (for the same reasons Patrick joined the Navy – no money for college and not much chance to do anything else in the highly competitive California culture without a college education) and was stationed in North Carolina. This is another fond memory I have of Pat – I remember that we went to the casinos, and he went off on his own to “try his luck.” We met up with him again later that night (or should I say, early the next morning) and he said “I thought this was about winning a lot of money, all I was able to do was lose money!” He seemed very disappointed! 

Patrick made one more visit home, right about the time we were selling our house and buying a ranch house in a rural area about 38 miles south-east of San Diego. We were moving from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom because Patrick had begun a career in Virginia, Melody had joined the Navy, was discharged from the Navy and was living in North Carolina and then later moved to Kentucky, and Catherine was about ready to live on her own and shortly afterward she moved to Florida. I’m not sure if Patrick was exploring the possibility of moving back home with us at this time, but I later learned that this is something he would have like to of done, and I guess it no longer seemed possible with our new house being so much smaller. By this time, we had learned that Pat was gay and also was HIV+, a fact that we were uncomfortable with, but we tried our best not to let it show. We must have not done a very good job at hiding our feelings because Patrick seemed a little distant, but he also tried very hard to make sure everything about the visit went well. I had just bought a brand new Plymouth mini-van, and I remember that I was not at all concerned when I gave him my keys so that he could go out and have a good time, looking up a few of his old friends and having a few drinks. I completely trusted Pat because he had gained such a strength and confidence by this time that it was impossible not to have faith in him. 

That was the last memory I have of Patrick. The next contact was when we got a call from one of his friends after that fateful event on December 11, 2003. We were with Catherine and Georgette visiting a winter resort near Palm Springs, California. It took a long time to get over the initial sadness, and none of us have ever gotten over the lingering sadness. It was with great delight that I accidentally discovered this web site while searching the Internet for the email address of Patrick’s uncle whose name is also Patrick Sherwin. We enjoyed looking at the photos on the memorial website. I contacted George Perry, whose name and email link appears on the site, and George was nice enough to send some photos of Patrick’s grave site. If anyone else who reads this would like to share any photos with us, we would greatly appreciate it because our home was destroyed by fire last year, October 21, 2007, and we lost all of our photographic memories. 

Our thanks to all of you for being such good friends to or son and for taking such good care of him after he left the nest and became a part of all of your memories. In the future, we will do all we can to keep this site alive and honor the fond memory of Patrick Dennis Sherwin. 

Sincerely,