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Patterson was born July 11, 1923 in Manhattan. His father, Robert P. Patterson Sr., was a federal judge, under secretary of war during World War II and secretary of war under President Harry S. Truman from 1945 to 1947. His mother, the former Margaret Winchester, managed Fair Oaks, their family farm in the Hudson Valley. Patterson grew up in Putnam County, attended the Millbrook School and enlisted in the Army Air Forces after his freshman year at Harvard. He was discharged four years later as a captain after flying 45 combat missions as a navigator. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He graduated from Harvard and Columbia Law School, and later joined Donovan, Leisure, Newton, Lumbard & Irvine and worked as an assistant counsel to the state crime commission and was an assistant federal prosecutor. In 1956, He joined Patterson, Belknap & Webb, the firm founded by his father, in 1956.
Among the lawyers he recruited to the firm were Zachary W. Carter, a former federal prosecutor and current chief lawyer in New York City; Michael B. Mukasey, former United States attorney general; and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Patterson also served as president of the New York State Bar Association and the Legal Aid Society in New York, and as chairman of Prisoners’ Legal Services.
In 1952, he married Bevin Daly, who died in 2011.
He is survived by his daughters Anne, Margaret and Katherine Patterson; a son, Paul; and four grandchildren.
Read his full obituary here.
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