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Pat’s founder made signature chili sauce
Henry Patterson turned to his wife last Thursday night and said, ”You know what I’d like? I’d like to go to Pat’s for a chili dog.”
Mr. Patterson, better known as Pat, never lost his taste for the business he started in 1955. But he never got the chance to eat that last hot dog, topped with mustard, ketchup, onions and his famous chili made with beef, beans and chiltepin peppers.
Mr. Patterson, 85, died early Friday morning in his sleep at his Tucson home.
”He left us much too soon,” said Lynne Patterson, his wife of 45 years.
After serving in the infantry during World War II, Mr. Patterson remained in Europe. He became a manager for the Coca-Cola Co., and eventually was transferred to Caracas, Venezuela, where he met his wife. After being wed in Mrs. Patterson’s native England, the couple came to the United States, and began driving cross-country in 1954.
”We were just headed west,” she recalled during a telephone interview yesterday . ”We didn’t know whether we’d end up in California or wherever. We ended up in Tucson, and we had to stay for three months to get my visa renewed.”
Tucson cuisine was never the same.
Mr. Patterson quickly bought the southwest corner of Church Avenue and Congress Street, where La Placita Village now stands.
The sale included a bar, The Legal Tender, and Mr. Patterson built not only the first Pat’s Drive In, but a cocktail bar called the Beachcomber. Mrs. Patterson, now 70, was bookkeeper for Pat’s and manager at the Beachcomber and Legal Tender.
”He said, ‘I want to give the people what they pay for,’ and he did,” she said of her husband. ”When we started, there wasn’t another hot dog place here. There was one McDonald’s in Phoenix. We sort of went on the same premise. We put out a good burger that was inexpensive. But we had chicken, shrimp, fish and chili dogs. The West Side people really loved the chili.”
Pat’s expanded to locations on South Sixth Avenue, East Speedway Boulevard and North Grande Avenue.
The doors at the original Pat’s closed in the early 1960s, when the city bought the property to build the Tucson Community (now Convention) Center.
”It was sort of the end of an era,” Mrs. Patterson recalled. ”I don’t know why they don’t leave some of those lovely places there, like the old El Conquistador or the Legal Tender.”
The only remaining Pat’s, at North Grande Avenue and West Niagara Street, north of St. Mary’s Road, opened in 1961. Seven chili dogs and a box of French fries sold for $1.30.
Longtime-employee Charlie Hernandez bought the business from Mr. Patterson in 1969, when there were seven employees. Now, there are 15. And four chili dogs and an order of fries go for $6.90.
”One thing he told me was, ‘Make sure the customers are satisfied and you’ll be all right,’ ” said Hernandez, 50, who still works at the restaurant daily. ”He told me, ‘Stick with what you know, and you’ll be all right.’ ”
Hernandez recalled that in the beginning, the famous chili topping was nothing more than tomato puree, salt and pepper.
Mr. Patterson ”got it to where we have it now,” Hernandez said. ”What makes the chili is the chiltepin. He went back and forth and back and forth until he got it.
”Now the people ask for it extra hot, and we give it to them.”
Hernandez has never considered changing the hot dog stand’s name.
”I like the name ‘Pat’s,’ ” he said. ”It’s simple. Everybody knows it. It’s tradition.”
Hernandez stayed in touch with his former boss and recently bought him a game called Tucson in a Box as a Christmas gift. One of the properties on the Monopolylike board game is Pat’s Drive In.
”I would go to his house for ‘Monday Night Football’ and talk and talk and talk,” Hernandez said. ”I wish I would have had a tape recorder. I could have written a book on him. I was in love with him. He was a very smart man.”
Mr. Patterson retired in 1969 to spend more time with his son, Bruce, who died of cancer in 1977. He leaves behind two daughters, Laura and Pam, and a son, Pat.
No memorial services are planned.
”He worked hard in Tucson to build up these businesses,” Mrs. Patterson said. ”He was a good man, God I don’t think there are too many of them left. He was caring. He was the greatest.
”It seems like the world should stop because he died.”
(Dated Mar 04, 1999)
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Tommie Thomas, 78, a ‘phenomenal woman’
Tommie Thomas was Mama to 11 of her own children and six of her husband’s brothers and sisters, whom she also raised.
And she was ”Mama” to hundreds of Tucson children who, throughout the years, spent time in her South Side home, which she opened to them when they had no place to go.
”Mama” died at home Sunday after a short illness. She was 78.
Mrs. Thomas also had six foster children, 27 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren and a host of relatives and friends.
Her children say their mother touched everyone she knew.
When Maya Angelou wrote ”Phenomenal Women,” she must have been thinking of our mother, some of the children said. ”She was a beautiful woman who gave all she could give. She believed that you can live the life you choose to live,” daughter Maiola Coleman said.
When Thomas came to Tucson in 1948, she began more than 50 years of community service to everyone from the elderly to minorities to, of course, children.
”Tommie had a style that really no longer exists,” said longtime friend and Pima County Supervisor Dan Eckstrom.
”When she saw someone with a need, she didn’t ship them off or ‘refer’ them to some other agency. She served them herself. She was a one-stop organization all on her own.”
And she did things with almost no money, he said.
That is clear from the way she opened her home to neighborhood children. It all started one night when, after coming home late from a meeting, she noticed small children still in the streets.
She invited them inside, and from there, her Off the Streets Program blossomed. Eight to 17 children would come to her home and stay – on weekends, during summer breaks and after school.
The program, begun in the 1980s, lasted for years in her home. She later started a larger version, The Center of Attention, which operated in the town of Rillito, north of Tucson, as well as in a low-income area near the Tanque Verde Wash, and at the Archer Center, 1665 S. La Cholla Blvd.
Nearly 5,000 children have participated in the program.
”And when they grow up, some hang around and I find something for them to do,” Mrs. Thomas said a few years ago in a Tucson Citizen interview. ”They become mentors for the little ones.”
Mrs. Thomas summed up her philosophy about children this way: She ”encouraged” them to do things rather than ”expected” it ”because these are children already frustrated.”
”They don’t like to be labeled, and they don’t like to be pressured. . . . You need to get it into their minds that in order to receive love, you have to give love,” she said in the interview.
It wasn’t only children whose lives she touched.
She made friends through her connections at many agencies, including the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Tucson Urban League, the League of Women Voters and the Eastern Stars.
She also helped to organize the El Rio Neighborhood Center.
An only child who had been raised by her grandmother in Texas, Mrs. Thomas grew up to be recognized as a ”Phenomenal Woman” by the University of Arizona in 1990.
She also received a letter of recognition from former President George Bush for her long-time community involvement, an outstanding community service award from the Beau Brummel Club and the ”Woman of the Year” award from the League of Women Voters.
Adults remember a tenacious woman who no one could say ”no” to.
Carolyn Emerine, director of the Pima County Attorney’s Office 88-CRIME Program, knew Mrs. Thomas for more than three decades. Emerine called her ”my mentor, my friend, my sister, my conscience.”
Emerine also termed Mrs. Thomas a ”Velvet Steamroller” – a woman with quiet devotion, dedication, drive and compassion – who was tough enough to make things happen.
”She had the greatest heart in the whole world and devoted her life to children,” Emerine said.
Still, it is a dinner for a group of elderly people that Emerine said is her most treasured story about her dear friend.
”We were frying chicken for a large group of elderly people in a small house on the West Side of town. The house was hot. There was no cooling and it was the middle of July. I was flouring more chicken than I had ever floured in my life and I was whining to her that I was tired from standing up and my feet hurt and I was hot.
”She took me over to the door and said, ‘Do you want to tell those people out there that you’re too hot and too tired and your feet hurt?’ I said no and went back into the kitchen,” Emerine said.
During all her community work, Mrs. Thomas also had to make a living. Her jobs ranged from domestic worker to director of the ”A” Mountain Community Action Office.
Visitation will be tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m. at Adair Dodge Chapel, 1050 N. Dodge Blvd. Funeral services will be Friday at 11 a.m. at Grace Temple Baptist Church, 1019 E. 31st St.
Mrs. Thomas is survived by nine of her children: son Lenton V. Thomas of Denver, Colo.; and daughters Betty Jo Berryman of Phoenix; Delanna Townsend of Moreno Valley, Calif.; Yvonne Flowers of Culver City, Calif.; Shirley Dunn of Los Angeles; Gloria Flannigan of Seattle, Wash.; and Jacky Johns, Tanya Thomas and Maiola Coleman, all of Tucson.
She also is survived by six ”extended” children: Dianne Clayton, LaVonne Booker, Arnold Thomas, Jimmy Thomas, Donald Thomas and James Massengale.
She was preceded in death by sons Melvin Lonnie Flowers and Email Flowers, and ex-husband Willie Frank Thomas.
Donations in her name may be made to Della’s Circle of Grace Temple Baptist Church, 1019 E. 31st St., Tucson, 85713; or AMVETS Post 107 Ladies’ Auxiliary, 6760 E. Bellevue St., No. 102A, Tucson, 85712.
(Dated Mar 17, 1999)
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Farewell, ‘Mr. Museum’
• ‘Hal’ Gras helped bring national attention to desert wildlife.
Harold W. ”Hal” Gras, who took the world of desert animals to Tucson children and adults for more than three decades, died yesterday of heart failure. He was 79.
Mr. Gras fascinated many viewers while hosting the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum’s ”Desert Trails” television show for 32 years and the museum’s outreach program, the Desert Ark.
By 1985, Mr. Gras had presented 5,382 Desert Ark programs.
For many years he was ”Mr. Museum,” said William H. Woodin, director of the Desert Museum from 1954 to 1971.
”He toured all the schools, and the children were absolutely entranced,” Woodin said. ”He would handle snakes, birds and all kinds of animals to try and dispel any fears children had of animals.”
Tom Sundt, 44, a longtime Tucsonan, grew up watching ”Desert Trails.”
”I would attend the little assemblies he would do for schoolchildren,” Sundt said. ”It was at least 34 to 35 years ago. He would bring in everything from desert raccoons to birds, eagles and snakes.
”He would just take them right out,” Sundt said. ”They would be trained to obey his every command. He spoke to them, and it seemed as if they spoke back at times.”
Woodin called Mr. Gras’ passing ”a great loss to the community. He was part of Desert Museum history, and it’s the end of an era.”
”He will be sorely missed in this town,” Sundt added. ”He is one of those enduring (Tucson) figures.”
Mr. Gras helped bring the museum national attention and increased environmental awareness, taking his show to the White House under Presidents Carter and Reagan.
In March 1964, NBC’s ”The Today Show” started a week of programs in Tucson. Barbara Walters interviewed Mr. Gras and fed two Desert Ark animals. It was her first live television appearance.
Mr. Gras was born April 3, 1919, in Clifton, N.J.
His father, Harold Sr., was an editor of the Passaic (N.J.) Daily News and later the Passaic Herald-News.
Mr. Gras graduated from Clifton High School in 1936 and worked as a cub reporter at the Paterson (N.J.) Evening News.
In 1940, Mr. Gras joined the Army and participated in the Normandy, northern France and Rhineland campaigns before he was discharged as a first lieutenant in 1945.
He married Renata ”Natie” Spilcker on Dec. 13, 1941.
After his discharge from the Army, Mr. Gras attended Texas Western University (now the University of Texas-El Paso), where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in radio and English.
The couple moved to Tucson in 1950, and Mr. Gras joined the staff of KVOA radio.
He was public relations director of the Desert Museum from 1955 to 1972.
In 1965, Mr. Gras received the first Governor’s Wildlife Conservation Award, sponsored by the Arizona Game Protective Association, the National Wildlife Federation and the Sears, Roebuck Foundation.
He was an honorary life member of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the Tucson Zoological Society, the Arizona Nature Conservancy, Tucson Botanical Gardens, Sonoran Arthropod Studies Inc., and Trinity Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Gras also was a 10-year board member of the Beacon Foundation for the mentally handicapped.
In an interview with the Tucson Citizen in 1983, Mr. Gras said the most important idea he tried to instill in his young audiences was that ”they are the most important part of nature and can contribute something to a better world.”
”We never stop growing until we start dying,” he said. ”As long as our minds are open, we are candidates for making the world a better place.”
Mr. Gras is survived by his wife, Renata, and daughter Jean E. Kiernan of Reno, Nev.
Services will be held next week at Bring Funeral Home, 236 S. Scott Ave. The date and time have yet to be set.
(Dated Mar 17, 1999)
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