(Historic) Ed Patrick
One of the founding fathers in Bigfootry, Ed Patrick formally of Redding and Hoopa, California, passed away on June 19, 2009. A key but often forgotten figure in the early history and beginnings of Bigfoot/Sasquatch investigations, Edward Richard Patrick died in Wonewoc, Wisconsin at the age of 83, after a lengthy illness.
Patrick’s Bigfoot activities were not widely known to the public because he never sought a podium and was overshadowed by his more famous buddy of the time, Bob Titmus. But Patrick was there in the initial days and assisted in contributing to the collection of more solid evidence for the existence of the creature than had previously occurred.
Ed Patrick shared in a pivotal role in the first public debut of “Bigfoot” in California in October, 1958. At the time of sightings and finds of large footprints by a road crew of a large hairy hominid along Bluff Creek, Patrick’s friend, Bob Titmus, owner of a taxidermy shop in nearby Redding, became interested in the incidents. It would be Titmus who supplied another old friend, construction worker Jerry Crew with the plaster-of-Paris and the instructions for using it that enabled Crew to make his famous cast of one of the 16-inch prints being found on the newly built dirt road above Bluff Creek, in the northwest corner of the state.
Ed Patrick became one of the most trustworthy and steady members of a small group of early Bigfooters involved in the Tom Slick-sponsored “Pacific Northwest Expedition,” formed in 1959. John Green would write years later that it would be Patrick that stayed out in the field the most, for others, such as René Dahinden grew disgusted with the personal infighting and went back to Canada, while Titmus had to go home to run his business.
Born December 18, 1925, in Summit Township, Wisconsin, Edward Patrick served in the US Army in WWII in the 232nd Infantry in Germany. He has been laid to rest in Potter Cemetery in Juneau County, Wisconsin.
Even in his official funeral announcement, his family reported that one of Edward Patrick’s “greatest passions was [his] many years of searching for Bigfoot.” *
