Long-Time Concord Booster, Councilor, State Rep. Dick Patten Dies

CONCORD, NH — A long-time fixture of Concord and the capital region who had been involved in several community events has died.

Dick Patten, a near seven-decade resident of the Concord Heights and former city councilor and state representative, was found dead at his home on Thursday. He was 68. The circumstances of his death and funeral arrangements were not available at post time.

Patten spent his entire life living on the Concord Heights. After holding a number of jobs, including police dispatcher and security at Concord Hospital, he retired early and ran for public office.

His "Around Town" cable access program, which was first weekly and later, biweekly, introduced the community to many of the city's movers and shakers but celebrated its unsung heroes — people who would not otherwise be interviewed, doing all the small things a lot of residents sometimes miss that make a community a great place to live. A radio version of the show aired for several years on WKXL 1450.

Patten organized the Concord Christmas Parade and the Concord Christmas Tree Lighting Celebration and Creche at the Statehouse plaza for nearly 50 years, raising money each and every year for permits and fireworks, bringing Concord together for the holidays.

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Patten also contributed for many years to the Town Crier column in the Concord Monitor and was an off and on contributor to both OurConcord.com and Concord NH Patch.

Patten was elected to the Concord City Council to represent Ward 8 in 2007, besting Ray Lacasse by a nearly three-to-one margin for the open seat. He served until 2013 when he decided not to run. Two new candidates, Gail Matson and Dennis Soucy, signed up to run — with Patten encouraging Soucy, a long-time friend, to run for the seat. However, at the last minute, Patten changed his mind and decided to run again and friends gathered 50 signatures for him to gain ballot access. It was all for naught though — Matson bested Soucy by 10 votes with Patten placing a distant third. Matson has beaten Soucy in three rematches since.

Patten was also elected as a state representative in 2010, placing second, for one of five seats in the Merrimack 11 floterial district. After the 2010 Census and redistricting, Concord was split into a combination of Ward represented seats as well as floterial districts.

Patten ran for the open Ward 8 state representative seat in 2012 and easily bested Chris Wood, a long-time city Republican activist, by a more than two-to-one margin. In a rematch in 2014, Patten won again by 121 votes. In 2016, he ran unopposed.

But in 2018, the Young Democrats of New Hampshire targeted his seat and Safiya Wazir, a refugee from Afghanistan, easily defeated Patten in the September primary by a more than two-to-one margin. The org did not primary any of the other state representatives in the city that year even though most of the reps and nearly all the incumbents were elderly residents.

Most important to Patten was his work for the Pineconia Concord Grange, where he was a member for 55 years. The grange has been an active fraternal organization that promotes families and agriculture in New Hampshire for more than 150 years. The org annually has honored many members of the community for their good deeds and hard work.

At the time of his passing, Patten had completed a book about the New Hampshire State Grange and the Concord Grange but it had not yet been published.

Brian Blackden, the current organizer of the parade, said the plan for 2021 was to have Patten be Grand Marshal, as a way of honoring him, in his 50th year of organizing and supporting it. He will be honored in memoriam, he said. Blackden expressed his condolences to Patten's family, calling it a sad day for them, the Grange, and all of his many friends.

"I worked with Dick on many projects, the annual Concord Christmas parade, the Christmas tree lighting, Around Town with Dick Patten, which was an interview show with local people discussing different topics such as history, religion, and community events, and a religious radio show for him that he hosted for the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church," he said. "I was a member of Grange 322 with him and I know of no other person who was as knowledgeable about the Grange or Concord Heights as Dick."

Blackden said Patten was involved in so many things and would be greatly missed by everyone.

Andrew Georgevits, a member of the Concord Republican City Committee and Concord Kiwanis Club, said the city had lost "a champion" of its people.

"Dick was a community leader in every sense of the word," he said. "He devoted his life to his community (and was) an honorary member of the Concord Kiwanis Club."

Patten's love of Christmas was "the embodiment of a truly caring soul," Georgevits noted, and this was seen in Patten's decades of service, organizing the parade and tree lighting, just two examples of giving back to the city.

"The Heights community truly lost a great man today," he said, adding, too, that it was a very sad day for the city.

Paul Brogan, a former mayoral candidate and author of the books, "Was That A Name I Dropped?," and "The Concord Theatre; And Concord's Love Affair With The Movies," about the city's historic moviehouse agreed Patten loved Concord with all his heart. He was "unwavering in singing the praises of our city" and took great pride in activities like the parade and the tree lighting.

"He would donate hundreds of hours, yearly, to finding supporters, sponsors, and coordinating, with a great team, the continuation of these parts of our history," Brogan said. "When Dick was working on those, his focus was on doing the right thing and doing it as well as he could."

Patten though, Brogan noted, was not without his "inner demons and they sometimes overwhelmed him." There were also errors in judgment, he said.

One incident involved an allegation of "ticket-fixing" that never actually was a request to fix a ticket. In December 2011, a friend of Patten's received a summons while making a no left turn from Clinton Street onto South Spring Street. Patten called the Concord police officer who wrote the ticket and asked why a warning was not issued instead twice during the call. The officer then reported the call to superiors. The officer never accused Patten of trying to fix the ticket — something that could not be done retroactively anyway since it was already issued. But the headlines in the Monitor insinuated otherwise — with editorialists calling for his resignation and Republicans requesting a serious review of the case, saying it raised integrity issues. The Concord City Council's Ethics Committee and the body itself held hearings and Patten was censured — since the offense was determined to be inappropriate but not worthy of dismissal. He later apologized to the council and the community for making the call.

"I know it was my bad judgment that caused Officer Lovejoy, the city council, and the people of Concord to question my ethics, morality, and my commitment to the city," he said, holding back tears. "As President John Kennedy once said, an error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. I look forward to working with all of you to correct this and can assure you that nothing like this will ever happen again."

Another incident was an accusation against him by Samuel Reid, a local man who performed handyman tasks at Patten's house and later, took out a stalking order against him after accusing Patten of trying to kiss him in April 2013. A couple of months later, a judge dismissed the case.

Patten was upset by how things sometimes played out in the headlines with Brogan noting, "there were more than a few glimmers of someone struggling" with personal issues.

"He could be exasperating at times," Brogan said. "As a friend, he was loyal and honest, almost to a fault and there were definitely faults. (But) you don't discard friends and so I remained a friend and some time advisor."

In the end, Patten wanted to do nothing more than celebrate the city, he said.

"I hope he'll be remembered for all of that," Brogan said.

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