He was 31. He was a weight lifter, and it showed. He loved kids, and he showed it. He had two adoring children, a beautiful wife, and an income approaching six figures.
His father was a Vietnam era vet, who tries to cover the loss of his son by fencing and farming. His mother was French, a gentle hospice worker with a heart big and bold. Few, however, until some years ago needed to knew how tough and hard a broken French heart could be.
On September 11, 2001, he told her "Mom, I have to do something." He didn't tell her he had that day picked up his enlistment papers.
"I've got two kids. I want to serve my country, but I don't want to leave the country," he told the National Guard recruiter.
"No problem. You'll probably end up guarding a nuclear plant or something in our country," replied the recruiter.
His father initially favored the war and all George Bush did, especially Bush's bragging about "We'll train them up, so our troops can step down." When they took his son forever, all those beliefs changed.
On October 11, 2001, he returned his sign-up forms and was assigned to the 579th Engineering Battalion based in Petaluma, California.
He asked Mom to take a ride with him. She knew something was wrong. When he told her what he had done, she stunned him with, "And if you have to take someone's life, what are you going to do?"
After a series of boot camps, April of 2004 found Patrick and his reservists tented outside of Fort Anaconda. He and his fellow engineers were always on patrol. He was training Iraqis in warfare, capturing the same trainees dropping mortars into the American compound, and arguing about his company's experiences and conditions to his superiors.
He was his company's go-to guy -- strong enough to carry the reservists' antiquated radio gear, to be the company's paramedic, their counselor, their psychologist, their cell phone provider, and their rep to the officers.
At home, his mother worried about her lifesaver. While he patrolled on foot or in his plywood-reinforced Humvee, from which he loved giving kids candy, she saved money to send him a fully reinforced Kevlar vest.
He was all you'd want a teammate to be in a season of tough games.
After six late-night patrols in a row, he heatedly argued for his guys with the officers for a night of tented sleep in Balad's 120 heat. They ordered him to do what he was told.
Early on the next day, June 22, 2004, Lieut. Andre Tyson, Bruce Himelright, and he were fired upon by snipers near a small village's police building. Then their back-up Iraqi Security Forces, whom they had been "training up" also opened fire on the Americans. Bruce, blown into a ditch, survived.
With the radio gear on his back, he came to Lieut. Tyson's defense. By the time the rest of the Americans came to them, the lieutenant was dead. He, however, had eight gaping holes through his muscled body, and was still breathing.
On June 29, 2004, in defiance of President Bush's ban against photographing soldier's caskets, she invited photographers to capture her son's Sacramento return. "He will not come home in darkness. He did not die for nothing. The way he lived needs to be talked about. He was not a fighter, he was a peacemaker."
