By Matt Schudel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Jack F. Patterson, a hard-nosed newspaper executive who guided The Washington Post to unprecedented circulation growth from the 1950s to the 1980s and who mentored generations of the paper's top administrators, died April 9 of melanoma at his home in Bethesda. He was 93.
Mr. Patterson, a pioneer of home delivery on the West Coast, joined The Post as assistant circulation director in 1952 when it was one of four daily papers in the capital and had a circulation of about 200,000. He improved the paper's delivery through a tightly managed system of independent distributors that he supervised down to the last detail.
Mr. Patterson became The Post's circulation director in 1956 and later held the titles of vice president and assistant president.
"Jack was one of the great circulation executives in the history of the newspaper business," Post Chairman Donald E. Graham said. "Katharine Graham would have said that no business executive was more important in building The Washington Post during the time she worked there. He knew every inch of the circulation operations and assembled a circulation team which just couldn't be beat."
Throughout his tenure at The Post, Mr. Patterson sternly resisted efforts to unionize his network of nighttime distributors and carriers. He engendered deep loyalty among his workers, but he was also a frequent target of union activists, sometimes at great personal risk.
"Those soldiers out there in the night loved him," said his son, James J. Patterson. "He was a tough taskmaster, though. His motto was, 'Do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it.' "
During the pressmen's strike of 1975 and 1976, Mr. Patterson urged then-Post Chairman Katharine Graham to continue publishing the paper, insisting that he would find a way to get the paper to its readers, despite threats of violence and sabotage.
In her autobiography, "Personal History," Mrs. Graham said Mr. Patterson was "in charge of the very complex problem of delivering the papers . . . to the waiting trucks of the distributors, in the face of all kinds of violence against the drivers, including being shot at."
At the height of the strike, when the paper's presses were shut down, Mr. Patterson helped arrange for helicopters to land on the roof of The Post's building to pick up the printers' plates that were flown to other newspapers for printing. When the printed papers were shipped back to Washington, Mr. Patterson entrusted them to his army of drivers, who left the loading dock under police escort.
Mr. Patterson stayed at the paper for days throughout the four-month strike, sleeping on a couch in his office. Once, behind the office, he was attacked and left with a bloody gash above his eye.
"He was beaten really bad," said his son. "They hauled him down to the alley and took a knife to his forehead.
"He loved The Washington Post with all his heart and soul," his son added. "He would have died for the paper."
Jack Francis Patterson was born Feb. 8, 1915, in Bend, Ore., and grew up in Seattle. He went to the University of Washington intending to become a doctor but was forced to quit when he ran out of money.
During the Depression, he was a gravedigger, waiter, cook, fish handler and zookeeper. For several years, he worked as a nightclub singer and performed with Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw. He was also a champion skier and did stunt skiing in the 1941 movie "Sun Valley Serenade." He served in the Merchant Marine during World War II.
Mr. Patterson began working in the newspaper business in Seattle in the 1930s, tossing bundles of papers from the running board of a truck.
"He was mentored along the way by a lot of cigar-chewing guys," his son said.
Mr. Patterson helped popularize direct home delivery to suburbanites at a time when newspapers were sold largely through newsstands and street-corner hawkers. He also had a welder devise a metal box that would open when coins were dropped into a slot.
"He always claimed to be the guy who invented the coin-operated newspaper rack," his son said. "He said he did that in Seattle the '30s, but he never got a patent."
Mr. Patterson later worked at papers in San Francisco and Los Angeles, then came east in 1952, when his daughter contracted a disease that could be treated only by doctors at Johns Hopkins University. He was hired by Post Chairman Philip L. Graham, who became a close friend.
After Philip Graham's death in 1963, Mr. Patterson became a trusted adviser to Katharine Graham, who took over The Post and made it Washington's dominant newspaper. In her autobiography, she praised Mr. Patterson's "independence and drive" and called him a "pillar on whom I knew I could rely." He later served as a mentor to Donald Graham.
Mr. Patterson retired in 1984 but maintained an office at The Post for the rest of his life, offering counsel to the paper's executives and staff.
"At 92," his son said, "he was driving to the paper every day till the first of the year."
His wife of 52 years, Dorothy Rose Patterson, died in 1995.
In addition to his son, of Bethesda, survivors include two other children, Jackie Patterson of Arlington County and John F. Patterson of Toronto; and a grandson.