Harman Wayne "Pat" Patterson (May 1, 1889 – March 31, 1987) was a

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

player and

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...

Early years

Harman Wayne Patterson, known as Wayne or "Pat", was born on May 1, 1889, in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. His father, Colonel Robert Harman Patterson, was an army officer and the family moved often.

Georgia Tech

Patterson was a prominent tackle and fullback on

John Heisman John William Heisman (October 23, 1869 – October 3, 1936) was a player and coach of American football, baseball, and basketball, as well as a sportswriter and actor. He served as the head football coach at Oberlin College, Buchtel College ...

Georgia Tech Golden Tornado football The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Football Program represents the Georgia Institute of Technology in the NCAA Division 1 Collegiate Competitors in the sport of American football. The Yellow Jackets college football team competes in the NCAA Div ...

teams. He also kicked the extra points. Patterson also played

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

at Tech. He was inducted into the Tech Athletics Hall of Fame in 1977.

1910

Patterson was selected All-Southern as a football player in 1910.

1911

He was

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

of its 1911 team which included the later coach William Alexander as a reserve

quarterback The quarterback (commonly abbreviated "QB"), colloquially known as the "signal caller", is a position in gridiron football. Quarterbacks are members of the offensive platoon and mostly line up directly behind the offensive line. In modern Ame ...

. He was selected All-Southern by

Dick Jemison Richard Stubbs Jemison (September 19, 1886 – January 9, 1965) was an early 20th-century American sportswriter in the South who was for eleven years the sporting editor of the ''Atlanta Constitution''. He wrote extensively on baseball and f ...

in the ''

Atlanta Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the Atlanta metropolitan area, metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Con ...

''.

After college

Following graduation from Tech in 1912, Patterson worked for Stone and Webster, the firm building the Goat Rock Dam in

Columbus, Georgia Columbus is a consolidated city-county located on the west-central border of the U.S. state of Georgia. Columbus lies on the Chattahoochee River directly across from Phenix City, Alabama. It is the county seat of Muscogee County, with which it ...

. He was a veteran of the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. In 1942, he became vice president and treasurer of the newly organized Home Builders Cooperative. Patterson retired as an electrical engineer for Georgia Power Company.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Patterson, Pat 1889 births 1987 deaths Players of American football from San Francisco American football tackles American football fullbacks All-Southern college football players Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets football players Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets baseball players Engineers from California