Jack Eugene Patterson, 91, died November 28, 2016, in Machias, Maine. He was born in Atlanta, Georgia on September 16, 1925, the son of William Francis Patterson and Ethel DeFoor.

Educated in public schools in Atlanta, at the age of 18 he enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and served in the India-Burma theater of operations, principally in the Adjutant Generals Department in New Delhi, India. At war’s end he returned to Atlanta and attended Emory University, receiving his bachelor’s degree 1948.

He then moved to New York City and pursued masters studies at Columbia University. While a graduate student there he performed research and provided contributions to the Columbia Encyclopedia. He embarked on a career in journalism, most notably as a writer and editor for Business Week magazine. Returning south to his home town, he covered the civil rights era in the 1960’s as Business Week’s Atlanta bureau chief.

He then moved his family back to New York and went on to become cities editor, book review editor and senior editorial page editor at the magazine’s New York headquarters and retired in 1987.

Following retirement, he remained in New York, residing initially in Brooklyn and then purchasing a coop apartment in Manhattan, as he continued to write the occasional article and book review for the magazine. Retirement also allowed him a better opportunity to satisfy a long held interest in travel, spending a good part of each year in Europe. During this time he developed a deep interest in Spain and its history and culture, and began research on a book project dealing with Christopher Columbus and the Age of Discovery.

The efforts of several years’ worth of study and research resulted in a book entitled Fonseca: Building The New World, published in 2010. The work is an examination of the role of a little known but influential bishop, Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, who served as the de facto minister of colonial affairs under Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Castile and later under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.

In recent years he continued to travel and spend time visiting friends in Madrid and London and in 2015 decided to move from his long time New York City residence to Cutler, so as to be closer to his son and grandchildren. Most recently he was a resident at East Point (formerly Davis Estates) in Machias.

While living in New York City he met and married Barbara Frost in 1955 and became a father to four children, having two children with his wife and gaining two step-children from her previous marriage. The couple divorced in 1973.

He is survived by a son, Andrew Patterson and his wife, Renee, granddaughter Anna and grandson Linus, all of Cutler, Maine. Also survived by a daughter-in-law, Joanne Zach and grandson Owen, both of Mount Vernon, New York, and daughter-in-law Martha Gunnarson of Oxford, Massachusetts. Predeceased by his beloved daughter, Catherine Frost Patterson, in 1968, and two stepsons, Philip Zach, in 2000, and Adam Zach, in 2011. A memorial service will be held at the Cutler United Methodist Church at 1 p.m., Saturday, December 10, with the Reverend Patti Sears officiating. Contributions in his memory may be made to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

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