The one & only Patricia Maddock

By Mark Frost, Chronicle Editor

I met Patricia Maddock in February 1981 when she applied for a job at The Chronicle as we were on the verge of going out of business. We’d suspended publication after Valentine’s Day, out of money and out of hope, six months after we launched the paper on a $1,700 wing and a prayer. For six weeks we didn’t publish anything.

Then Patricia and our later art director Corwin Skinner arrived, two of a slew of miraculous events that enabled us to resume.

Pat and Corwin brought hands-on experience that we badly needed. Patricia had been working at the North Creek News-Enterprise, then a quintessential small weekly operated by George and Naomi Gardner. Corwin, who grew up on a farm in Fort Ann, had moved to Rochester for college and successful career as an art director, but now he wanted to come home.

Besides their know-how, Pat and Corwin brought limitless positivism, like my Chronicle co-founders Joyce Miller and Teresa Hackett. With these four as my full-time staff, now we had a fighting chance at survival.

Only 30 years later or so did Patricia inform me she wasn’t really applying for a job when she sent that letter and résumé. It was an assignment for a class she took with Jean Rikhoff at Adirondack Community College.

Fortunately I took it seriously.

I am the most thoroughly left-handed person on the planet. Patricia was my right-hand.

She was detail-oriented, where I was taking off on flights of imagination. She was irrepressible where I suffered deep lows.

“Don’t think big thoughts when you’re depressed” was a pearl of wisdom Patricia hit upon during one bleak night when all to me again seemed lost.

Patricia had a bunch of essential sayings. “Nice don’t feed the bulldog.” “Cut to the chase.” “One thing at a time.” “Close enough for government work.” When I’d put something in the paper that was certain to offend sensibilities, she’d say, “There goes Washington County.” But she never tried to stop me from publishing it. She liked when things got edgy — and her loyalty to me and The Chronicle never wavered.

Patricia did not suffer fools gladly or any other way. She’d let you know what she thought. Man, she hated Donald Trump! She also loved to laugh. She appreciated my idol Richard Pryor more than anyone else I know — loved to hear me recite the lines like when Pryor depicted the wino on the street giving advice to the junkie: “You better lay off that narcotic, son; that stuff done made you null and void.” Pryor’s blue language didn’t faze Patree.

She officially retired from The Chronicle in 2008, after 27 years, but she still came in to proof-read and chime in with her thinking. Pat bounced back from a very bad auto accident, but eventually health issues took a long, sad toll.

In the late going at the nursing home, my goal was just to make her smile. I’d make forced conversation trying to engage her. “I’m a wealth of information,” I told her one day in March.

“Most of it trivial,” she replied.

Patricia grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, back when it was working-class, not gentrified. She and her girlfriend Irene went across the river and found jobs in the dean’s office at New York University law school. Pat met her first husband, a filmmaker named John Reilly, at NYU. She remembered the night that his friend Martin Scorsese slept on their couch.

Patricia’s second husband, Peter Tsavalas, was related to the actor Telly Savalas. Peter brought Patricia to North River. When the marriage broke up, Patricia really had to make a life for herself from scratch. Not only did she not have a car, she didn’t know how to drive. She made her way, landed the job at the News-Enterprise, joined arts organizations, made terrific friends in Sally and Mary Lynne.

In 1981 she moved her life to Glens Falls.

She was a full-fledged member of the Frost family (godmother to our first-born), with Sandy and me and our kids every step of the way, at our table for every holiday meal (particularly interesting events when we were joined by her friend Lester Sternin until he passed away).

On the last night of her life, the nursing home phoned at 1 a.m. to alert Sandy that Patricia was failing. We were Pat’s health care proxies, had her power of attorney. We spent that night next to her. Sandy was holding Pat’s hand when she passed away in the morning. We love you, Pat.

Patricia Maddock dies at 79

Patricia Maddock, the Hoboken, New Jersey, native who joined The Chronicle in 1981 and worked for and helped drive the success of the paper for 27 years, including as its publisher, passed away at the age of 79 on Wednesday, June 19. She had no immediate relatives but many friends, including much of the past and current staff of The Chronicle and her close friend Sally.

Patricia appreciated the care she received from Dr. David Cunningham, Plumeria Family Adult Home in Fort Edward, Glens Falls Hospital and The Pines nursing home.

A memorial service and burial will be private. A remembrance in the spirit Patricia would desire will take place at The Docksider, one of her favorite destinations.

Copyright © 2019 Lone Oak Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.