To Pat On What Would Have Been His 93rd Birthday

Patrick Suppes 

March 17th, 1922-November 17th, 2014

Not enough was published about you darling Pat, after you died. Most people could never comprehend exactly how much you had achieved in your lifetime.  Your genius was discovered by your home state of Oklahoma and you were put into accelerated classes.  You were the student body president of your huge school, Tulsa Central High, graduating a year early. You continued on at the University of Chicago, where its president, Robert Maynard Hutchins, another early proponent of gifted students, took notice of you.  His daughter fell in love with you as well. You were the youngest captain in the US Air Force during WWII and were in an elite weather group which forecast  the most important assignments in the South Seas.  You came home from the war, finished up in Chicago and moved on to Columbia University.  You had married the gifted and charming architect, Joanne Farmer, and you studied physics, for which you received a Ph.D. 

Then you really started to really make history.  Your first job was at Stanford University as a lecturer in philosophy.  Here you were, this lanky, young, brash Oklahoman, shaking the very foundations of this relatively new institution, which had its beginnings rooted in conservative, liberal arts, East Coast style education.  Your champion was none other than Fred Terman, father of Silicon Valley.

"When we set out to create a community of technical scholars in Silicon Valley, there wasn't much here and the rest of the world looked awfully big.  Now a lot of the rest of the world is here"

Frederick Terman

This meant the beginning of the computer age.  You designed and implemented the first computer programs in elementary school classrooms in disadvantaged East Palo Alto. You also designed a computer logic course at Stanford which became a standard bearer for undergraduates...i.e., students took it if they wanted to really have their mettle tested.  Yet you were a brilliant lecturer, and took it upon yourself to memorise the name and face of every student who took your class.  To the students in the early 50's who thought you were another servant in their family (believe it or not, Stanford had students like this at the time) you disabused these kids of the notion very quickly:  apologise or flunk out.  Yes, Stanford was changing.  You and Joanne had two daughters and a son, and you began Computer Curriculum Corporation, selling hardware (in the beginning) and software to schools across the country.  On your 45th birthday, RCA took out a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal to congratulate "Computer Pioneer Dr. Patrick Suppes" I married you at the end of the 70's as CCC was getting into full swing and you were beginning to earn international accolades  and honorary degrees all over Europe. You were inducted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1978.  What others might not know is exactly how much you did for the poor and under served---you were able to get electricity to towns like Paintville, KY, (home to Loretta Lynn and her sister Crystal Gale) to implement your computers.  You were honoured by the Central Institute for the Deaf in St. Louis because these kids found a new way to learn.  You brought computer education to every corner of the earth, and if that corner was dark, you made sure it got lit. We had two children and travelled all over the world with them.  You sold CCC in 1990, took a forced retirement from Stanford in 1992, and were recalled back to "active duty" immediately. After endowing several chairs in the humanities, you then started Educational Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). which hearkened back to your early love and respect for gifted learning programs.  You,first under the wing of Fred Terman and then on your own, changed the landscape of Stanford University, most likely more than any other before or since. 

You were a human being as well.  We all wanted to believe you would stay healthy and alive forever.  A brain like yours is one in a lifetime.  It burned furiously and passionately until you came ill after 2007.  As your wife of 33 years, I love you and always will for the good days and for our beautiful children and for the legacy of humanity and education for all which cannot ever be diminished.  There is only one Patrick Suppes, and I am proud to have called you my husband.