Herbert Parsons Patterson (September 3, 1925 – January 29, 1985), was an American banker who served as president of the Chase Manhattan Bank.
Early life
Patterson was born on September 3, 1925, at Sloan Maternity Hospital in New York City.[1] He was the second son of Morehead Patterson and Elsie (née Parsons) Patterson (1901–1966).[2] His elder brother was Rufus Lenoir Patterson III,[3] a Lieutenant with the USAAF who was killed in action during World War II.[4] His parents divorced in 1929 and his mother married John Drummond Kennedy in 1934.[5] His father was an inventor who served as president and chairman of American Machine and Foundry.[6]
After graduating from the Groton School in 1942, he attended Yale University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1948. During World War II, he was a junior officer in the Navy serving in the Pacific.[8]
Career
In 1949, he joined Chase Manhattan Bank, where he spent his entire banking career.[8] After a succession of posts, starting as an assistant manager and including assistant treasurer, vice president and executive vice president, he became president of the bank in 1968 when the previous president, David Rockefeller, also the bank's largest individual shareholder, became chairman and chief executive.[9] Patterson was a trustee of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Mayor's Fiscal Advisory Committee.[10] In 1972, after the bank was losing its competitive position and suffering a decline in earnings, he was replaced as president by Willard C. Butcher, and left the bank.[11]
After Chase, he served as a financial consultant to Marshalsea Associates and then as president of the Stonover Company, a financial consulting firm he founded in 1977.[8] He also served on the board of directors of AMF, the company founded by his grandfather and which was run by his father as well.[11]
Personal life
In July 1949, Patterson was married to Louise Sargent (née Oakey) McVeigh (1925–1968), an operatic and concert soprano, at the River Club.[12] Louise, the widow of David Malcolm McVeigh, was a daughter of Francis Oakey of New York and The Studio in Southampton, New York.[13] Her only attended was her sister, Joan Oakey Benjamin (wife of Samuel Nicoll Benjamin),[a] and his best man was his cousin, Casimir de Rham Jr.[b][12] Louise's grandmother, Ellen (née Sargent) Oakey, was a cousin of the artist John Singer Sargent.[12] Before her death in 1968, they were the parents of:
Patterson died of pulmonary failure Tuesday at his home in New York City on January 29, 1985. After a funeral in New York, he was privately buried in Lenox, Massachusetts,[8] where he was a trustee of the Lenox Library.[21] After his death, Stonover, his family's estate in Lenox,[c] was sold and today is operated as a bed and breakfast.[22]
^Stonover was designed by Charles T. Rathbun in 1890 for his great-grandfather, John Edward Parsons, father of Herbert Parsons.[22] Patterson's mother and stepfather, John D. Kennedy, a well-known conservationist after whom Kennedy Park in Lenox is named, lived at Stonover Farm.[21]
