CPA was chairman of board for St. V's

9/14/2009

Robert Ulmer Patterson, 93, a retired Toledo accountant and former chairman of St. Vincent Hospital's board of trustees, died Saturday at his home in West Virginia.

His death was likely related to complications of several strokes suffered in his last years, his youngest daughter, Ann Fort, said.

After he retired as a certified public accountant and audit partner at the former Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co. in 1974, Mr. Patterson immersed himself in volunteer work by serving on several advisory boards in the community.

"My mom always joked that after he retired, he still had a full-time job," Mrs. Fort said. "He was around 60 when he retired, and he was sharp. He had a lot to offer."

From 1978 to 1983, Mr. Patterson served as chairman of the board of trustees of the former St. Vincent's Hospital, now Mercy St. Vincent Medical Center. He also served on the board of Family Services of Northwest Ohio; the former Medical College of Ohio's joint liaison committee on medical education; the board for the Sunshine Children's Home, and as treasurer of the Toledo Dental Dispensary.

Before he moved to Asheville, N.C., with his wife in 1989, Mr. Patterson also was church treasurer and active on several committees at Epworth United Methodist Church in Ottawa Hills, his daughter said.

He was born in Toledo in 1915. A Scott High School graduate, he attended the University of Toledo.

He served in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1941 to 1945 during World War II, and he enjoyed sharing stories of his time in the service with his grandchildren, Mrs. Fort said. He spent two years on Alaska's Aleutian Islands and recounted how he nearly lost his life during an attack by the Japanese.

"The storm came in with really dense fog, and they could actually hear the planes overhead," she said. "The weather saved them."

He was dating someone else when he met his wife, Katharine, on a double date a few months before the end of his time in the service. They married three weeks later, his daughter said.

He is survived by his wife, Katharine, of Lewisburg, W.Va.; his brother, William Henry Patterson, Jr., of Toledo; daughters, Claire Smith of Portland, Maine, and Ann Fort of Lewisburg, W.Va.; and eight grandchildren.

Visitation will be held at noon Saturday at Wallace and Wallace Funeral Home in Lewisburg. Services will follow at 2 p.m. Saturday.

The family suggests tributes to the Greenbriar Community College Foundation Inc., of Lewisburg, to establish a scholarship in Mr. Patterson's name for students with an interest in accounting.