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[Image of Cuthbert Melvin Patrick in his younger years]
Cuthbert Melvin Patrick in his younger years. 

He loved to pub crawl at times, in the company of his newspaper buddies in the media-Jessie Walker, Jimmy Booker, Les Matthews, the late Jimmy Hicks, all of the Amsterdam News in New York. He loved a good time and could let "his hair down" in the company of his loved ones or his pals-and these names can start in New York, Boston, St. Louis, California, wherever he happened to be. 
And in the "right place at the right time" most of the time, Mel collected people, seizing each opportunity to make a new friend, not just an acquaintance. These names-most of them sheiks and shakers-served him will[well] as publisher of Delegate Magazine. Mel perhaps knew that the ability to meet people and win friends would serve a useful purpose, and Mel was alwaysthe [[always the]] visionary optimist. 
From Thomas Hoving, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to multi-talented photographer-author-film maker Gordon Parks to the late maestro Duke Ellington, actress Hilda Simms, baseball great Monte Irvin and the legendary Willie Mays-Mel, at one time or other was in a position to cultivate and to win their friendship, some before the days of fame and fortune. 
But he never forgot the members of his fraternity-Phi Beta Sigma-or the Pan-Hellenic Council of New York, who might need him or the vocational Guidance and Workshop Center led by Katie J. Hicks. Anyone who needed a favor could count on Mel Patrick to. help and he gave away his time and his money. Reasonably comfortable, he lived up to Disraeli's definition of a gentleman: "Proprietary of manners and consideration for others are the two main characters of a gentleman."
Mel Patrick was an enigma. The happenstance of his birth conceivably preordained this enigmatic man and the non-conforming career path he chose. 
Born July 24, 1914, on aboard a ship bound for New York from Panama, Mel entered this life afloat. His father, Morton Koleridge Patrick, with his wife Elma and their five-year-old daughter Edna set off for America after the Panamaian railroads had been completed. The Patricks were originally from Barbados and Mel treated the subject of his family in the 1982 edition of Delegate for it exemplified the survival and achievement record of a family. 
When the small family reached New York, Mel Patrick became an American citizen on his father's papers. The elder patriarch found emplyment[employment] on the New York Central Railroad, and one year later, the first ship passed officially through the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914. Mel was a year old by that time. 
Growing up in New York, Mel, in the 1982 Delegate, described his years as a youth. He remembered meeting his father at the end of a "run" in the rail yards and lugging home parcels of unused food. To stretch the comestibles as long as possible, Mel would fetch ice from the block's iceman, J. Raymond Jones, who later left his business to become the first Black County Leader of New York Democrats. 
Although West Indian, Mel cast his lot with American Blacks. As a youngster he watched the Harlem renaissance and the "heyday" bring tourists from downtown New York to the Cotton Club. Impressions of those early days never dissolved with time; instead, as he grew into a young man he recognized the early years as those rich with history. Mel added his own observations of the era to an issue of Delegate which has become a reference work of sorts.
A raconteur, Mel would use most any excuse to revive nostalgic memories. "Harlem was clean. Safe. Actually pretty," he would say. "Everyone was middle class in behavior if not in the pocketbook."
But he placed in perspective the nebulous differences between West Indian Americans and American Blacks:
"Black Americans...did not have to be...'pushy'...as West Indians were so described by both souther and northern Blacks...for their...industriousness. Blacks did not have to push because they were already two generations ahead as professionals, operating their own businesses, heading their own colleges, and educating more and more blacks each year. Americans were not competing with West Indians as it was unnecessary."
[Image of Fannie and Mel Patrick opening a birthday gift for their daughter Ann]
This happy portrait was taken in 1952 as Fannie and Mel Patrick open a birthday gift for their daughter Ann.

Mel Patrick attended New York's public schools in Harlem, and two of his early classmates and buddies have remained close ever since-Dr. Kenneth Clark, noted sociologist and educator, architect of the anti-poverty program; and Dr. Samuel Brisbane, distinguished physician who was assigned to the USO during the World War II years. 
After graduating from DeWitt Clinton High School, Mel went south, to Atlanta, Georgia to attend Morehouse College. Another, different view of Black life in America would impress him as perhaps no other. A segregated city, a segregated school by sex as well as race, etched lasting opinions and theories which never left him. Morehouse, spawning ground for many Black leaders-among them the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the late Robert Wilson Kitchen, chief economist of the United States Mission to the United Nations and later chief development officer of the UN's East African Development Program in Nairobi, Kenya; Dr. Malcolm Corrin, head of the Interacial Council for Business Opportunity. 
Morehouse President Dr. Benjamin Mays, the late orator and educator, quelled young boys into men of challenge and vision. He channeled energy and intellect into the never ending quest for achievement on a high plan. The school's distinguished faculty and alumni have never lost the "Mays" touch and inspiratio[[inspiration]] and guidance. Within the cloistered campus Mel Patrick bloomed. He joined his fraternity and experienced the comradeship of his peers. But always a joiner, he had played basketball at Harlem's YMCA, attended Sunday School at St. Luke's Episcopal Church and took part in their drama group. His wry, razor sharp with adn his fun loving good nature endeared him to others all his life. 
From Morehouse he went on to atlanta[[Atlanta]] University to earn a master's degree in social work. After graduation he earned a Certificate for Post-Graduate Study in Business at City College in New
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