Harold Leroy Patterson, a cherished adopted Quinault and active participant in the Indian Shaker Church, died at the age of 92 on May 18, 2013, at his home in Brooklyn, Washington. He is also known affectionately as Mr. Pat and by his tribal name, KEmkEn (which is the Quinault word for Salmon). He was born on August 29, 1920, in Portland, Oregon to Alonzo and Mary Agnes (Wright) Patterson (known as May).
Mr. Pat worked odd jobs as a young man, then as a Border Patrol agent and was a gunner in the Army Air Corps. None of his early jobs resonated with that still voice he sought to hear within himself or with the fundamentalist Christian faith with which he wrestled. He entered the Army Air Corps during World War II where he was washed out of pilot school due to a surplus of pilots. As a waist gunner on the B17, he fell in love with his civilian gunnery teacher, Shirley Jean Van Hamm. They married on December 31, 1944.