In Memoriam: ASPA Past President Bradley Patterson
Bradley Patterson, Jr. of Bethesda, Maryland passed away on Thursday, March 19, 2020 at the age of 98. Patterson was born to Helen Gilman and Bradley Hawkes Patterson Sr. on December 5, 1921 in Wellesley, Massachusetts. He married his soulmate, Shirley Jane DoBos at Rockefeller Chapel on the Campus of the University of Chicago on December 26, 1943. They were married for 67 years until her death in 2011. He is survived by daughter Dawn Marie Capron, and three sons, Bruce DoBos, Glenn Gilman, and Brian Braese, as well as 10 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Patterson received his bachelor’s degree in 1942 and his master’s degree in 1943, both from the University of Chicago. He served in the Department of State (1945-1954) and as deputy secretary to the cabinet under President Eisenhower (1954-1960). In 1960, he won the Arthur S. Flemming Award as one of the ten outstanding young men in federal service. During the Kennedy Administration (1961-1962), he became the first executive secretary of the Peace Corps under Sargent Shriver. He served (1962-1966) as national security assistant at the Treasury Department, graduating from the National War College in 1966. He was executive director of the presidential National Advisory Commission on the Selective Service (1966-1967).
In 1969, Patterson returned to the White House to serve as executive assistant to Leonard Garment under President Nixon. During his tenure under Garment, he helped implement President Nixon's policy of Indian self-determination. He was instrumental in returning Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo, restoring fishing rights to the Yakima and passing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. He personally intervened in the AIM takeover of the BIA building, the occupation of Alcatraz and the standoff at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Beginning in 1974, Patterson served as staff aide to First Lady Betty Ford and was President Ford's assistant director of the Office of Presidential Personnel (1975-1976). He joined the Brookings Institution as a senior staff member of their Center for Public Policy Education (1977-1988). He was elected president of ASPA (1984-1985) and served as member of the American Political Science Association and associate of the Center for the Study of the Presidency. For more than 30 years he also was a member of the Potomac Corral of the Westerners. In 2004, he was awarded the University of Chicago National Alumni Association's Professional Achievement Citation.
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