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9

I don't think I ever knew what church he attended and it was a matter of no importance.  Pat had a round, pleasant face and an affable manner.  He dressed quietly like a successful professional man but no tweeds. He was medium height and inclined slightly toward fleshiness, which wasn't too desirable because I think he'd already had a mild heart attack. But the thing about Pat that made him border on the remarkable was his ability to make and keep friends and the latter included keeping them in his memory for years. The result of this was that wherever Pat went he met people whom he knew currently or had known even back to college days. To most people, a chance meeting with an old friend is a coincidence that happens so infrequently that it's noteworthy but in Pat's case it was actually noteworthy if he failed to establish old connections. I never researched this matter so I don't know how he accomplished this blanket coverage; I only know that whenever I've been with him, I've seen it in operation and marveled at it. He had the happy faculty of making people glad to be his friends, to see him again, to be with him. And he obviously had a superb memory for names and faces. He was one of the nicest guys to know and be with that I ever met. [[left facing red pencil bracket]]

There was one other feature of Pat's Washington operation that I favored particularly and that was his secretary. She was my old secretary and friend of several years, Jennie Post. After the war broke at Pearl Harbor, Jennie felt that she wanted a bigger piece of the action without leaving the Company. So she talked to Whitey and I believe to me also about the possibility of getting a wartime assignment in the Washington office. I don't recall exactly how it was worked out but the upshot of it was that Jennie wound up by transferring down there in the spring of 1942 as Pat Murphy's secretary. She lived I believe at a high-class girls rooming house and I have the impression that after the initial novelty of Washington in wartime wore off, she wasn't particularly happy with the change although she liked her job and working for Pat. Nevertheless she stuck it out and didn't return to Erie until near the war's end when Miss Giblin, Whitey's secretary, retired and Jennie took her place. Jennie was always a bright spot for me when I went into the office during my many months of travail in Washington in 1942 and I think she was perhaps as glad to see me as I was to see her, both of us probably being homesick a good bit of the time. However, during my roughly nine months in Washington altogether in 1942, I saw very little of her outside the office. I took her to lunch once and once out to dinner I believe to celebrate her birthday, the latter date with others along as I recall. These outings are covered in my diary. Jennie was a fine girl. It may be that Jennie being Jewish had something to do with her failure to be entirely happy in Washington although there are lots of Jews in government service. For more about Jennie, refer to pp7-8 of my 1941 account.