Thoughts of friends & colleagues
[More to come. Send your thoughts on Ron to saja@columbia.edu]

So far: Mary Patel, Ron Iseman, Peter Bhatia, Porus Cooper, Richard Goddard, David Iseman, Peter Landis,Sree Sreenivasan, Susan Werner

From MARY PATEL, Ron's wife
The loss of Ron for me is beyond devastating. But I know that Ron would not want me to be in perpetual mourning. Therefore, in order to preserve his name and reputation into perpetuity, I have organized the Ron Patel Scholarship Foundation. Ron was a credit to his profession. He was a caring and sensitive man who listened to everyone because he thought that everyone had a message to tell. I don't know why God took him so soon. I can only hope that he is looking down on all this and that his name lives on with his foundation. (More on the Ron Patel Scholarship Foundation).

From RON ISEMAN, co-editor, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader
Sad to hear of Ron's death. My sense of him: as tough as he was driven. No gushing allowed over someone that strong.

From PETER LANDIS, news director, NY1 News
(met Ron during a Columbia University race coverage workshop in 1999)
I'm trying to put into words what I feel without appearing overly dramatic. But reading about Ron Patel's death was really a shock. I knew the man for the space of a few days. But I'm still saddened by his death. His obit, I think, got it right. From the little I knew of him, he seemed to be someone who was driven by the desire to get it right, to do it right. He seemed to be someone who pushed to do the best job he could--while pushing everyone he worked with to do the same. The Inquirer will be lessened by his death.

From SUSAN WERNER, singer-songwriter
I was playing weddings, bar mitzvahs etc. in Philadelphia in 1989. A pal said that somebody from the Inquirer was looking for a piano player for a club. This was when the Pen and Pencil was on N. 13th Street. Ron Patel explained that this was a journalists bar, that he was trying to revive it, and that he wanted some kind of rummy piano; he wanted live music instead of just a jukebox. So I began playing every Friday night, reading out of fake books, playing Gershwin and Cole Porter and Fats Waller and whatever I could figure out and get through.

About the third night there, this guy named Tim Weiner asked me if I could sing, too. I said, yeah, I guess. So then we brought in a mike and speaker and I started singing any tune I could learn. Then Tim had requests and so did Terrence Samuel and Dianna Marder and before long I had a pretty fat repertory of tunes. This guy Gerald Benson was playing bass over at the Ritz, and he'd stop in for a drink after work -- and before long Ron added him to the payroll and we had a duo. Then Ron sprang for a drummer, and we had a trio and it became a real night's work. People came in just to listen to us, even though we did no outside advertising. Ron wanted the place to have atmosphere, and it did.

Ron felt I should become a real chanteuse -- a shantoosey, as he said it -- a cabaret singer. He and Gerald coached me toward becoming a kind of musical hostess, like Mabel Mercer -- and this is where things were at when my songwriting career took off and I began touring the country non-stop and had to leave the club. Now I shantoosey about 150 dates a year. But many of my best nights were playing at the club, learning new tunes, playing requests for the circle of people we knew, tearing up "Old Black Magic and "Sheik of Araby" and "Let's Do It" etc. etc. etc. with Ron leaning on the bar, nursing a scotch and watching, black eyes shining, just smiling a little smile like an Indian wise man, knowing he created all this and people enjoyed it.

From PETER BHATIA, executive editor, The Oregonian
Ron Patel was an Indian American journalist before there was such a thing as an Indian American journalist. He and I mused on occasion about our shared heritage and how we came to find ourselves in journalism. I believe he also shared the same delight I find as more and more young Americans of Indian descent have found their way into our chosen lifestyle. I hope Ron Patel will be remembered most not necessarily for being a pioneer, but for being a fabulous journalist and the legendary Sunday editor of the Inquirer. He is a journalist whose mark and impact is so visible, so tangible and that will live on even though now he is gone. Ron and I hadn't talked much the past few years. I didn't even know of his illness. But our connection, albeit distant, was a unique one, and one that I will always be grateful that I had.

From PORUS COOPER, deputy New Jersey editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer
(Was Ron's colleague for 14 years)
My personal encounters with Ron were mostly professional, though he would occasionally dun me to resume my Pen and Pencil Club membership; I let it lapse after I moved to the New Jersey bureau of the Inquirer and stopped working routinely in the city. It would be fair to say that the club would have died long ago but for Ron's vigorous efforts to sustain it; that he did in various ways, including by offering an attractive list of speakers. One evening, several years ago, he and I were seated side by side at the P&P, which then was at its former location just off Spring Garden Street. I was a relatively new and low-level hire. He was one of the stars. I desperately wanted to know the Indian side to him, which his name hinted at but which in those years he hardly revealed to strangers. To my dismay, he proceeded to confess that he knew little of his Indian heritage, emphasizing instead that his mother was of Polish extraction, and that he had no special interest in the subcontinent. I felt deflated. But some time later, perhaps a few years later, came his celebrated visit to his father's ancestral village in Gujarat. He wrote about his ethnic awakening in an article that was viewed within the Inquirer variously as exotic or self-involved. While his experience -- he wrote that a whole village turned out to greet him -- was hardly my experience when I returned to Bombay for the first time some years after coming to America (I was greeted by customs and immigration officials), I found his story entirely credible. Nothing can match the warmth of rural India, and the outpouring of affection for the never-before-seen son of a prominent resident of the village who had left for a land far away could hardly have been manufactured.

From SREENATH SREENIVASAN, co-founder, South Asian Journalists Association
Ron was one of the senior-most Asian American editors in the country, but he was amazingly accessible to young journalists. I would regularly send students and SAJA members his way with questions and ideas, and he would always lend them--and me--an ear... He talked to me at length about his father's difficulty in getting a job as a journalist in New York City back in the 1920s--no room for Indians on American papers! But Ron not only became a journalist--he showed how successful minority journalists can really be.

From Rick Goddard, freelance writer
Ron was more committed to journalism than anyone else I ever met.

[More thoughts to come. Send yours on Ron to saja@columbia.edu]

o o o o o

Eulogy for Ron Patel
By Robert J. Rosenthal
Editor & executive VP, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan. 11, 2000

Ten weeks ago, Ron didn't know he was sick. He hadn't felt well for a few weeks, and, near the end of October, he went to the doctor. A few days later, he found out that he had a terrible cancer.

In the days that followed, all of us in the newsroom could see that Ron was not well. I knew he had cancer weeks before others did at the paper. When I tried to convince him to let me tell others what was wrong, he asked me not to.

He didn't want anyone making a fuss over him, or anyone to feel sorry for him. He said he was going to try and beat this disease and that he wanted to work and do his job.

All of last year, he had talked about New Year's Eve. He was looking forward to running the paper that night, wondering what would happen, thinking of every contingency, planning the front page for a paper he knew people would keep as a memento.

2000 had a magical ring--Y2K--millennium---would there be terrorism---surprises...what an opportunity to put out a great paper. Throughout November and December, Ron worked. But he was getting weaker and sicker. He became, and this is strange to say about Ron, but it is absolutely true -- gentle, serene. He seemed to be totally at peace with himself.

I talked to him frequently. He would talk about everything but himself. But there was so much unsaid. Finally, one evening I said, "How are you doing? How do you feel about all of this? Are you OK?"

He looked at me, smiled that quirky half smile, shrugged and said, "I got hit by a truck. I just got hit by a truck." And then he smiled and shrugged again.

He would repeat that line with me during other conversations, but what he really wanted to talk about was work. He never said he was afraid of his illness or his death. What he feared was that I would tell him that I didn't want him to work, that I was concerned he couldn't do the job, that I didn't want him in the newsroom, in the newspaper that had been so much a part of him for 27 years.

I said Ron, forget it, you will be here. The only way you won't be here is if you make that decision. He would shake his head and say thanks and immediately begin talking about stories and events that were coming up. He was looking forward to running Doug Campbell's "Lost at Sea" series. He talked about other projects. He wanted desperately to reverse the problems with circulation. He was excited about the Republican convention. He was looking ahead.

In one conversation, I pressed Ron about letting me tell people how sick he was. I told him the staff wanted to do what they could to help him. Ron told me that someone had written him a note saying that he was worried about Ron because he had lost so much weight. Ron told me how he had always been tough on this person, and that under the crunch of deadline, he had sometimes gotten excited with this editor. The editor had written Ron a note telling him how much he liked working with him and how much he had learned from Ron. Ron wept when he told me how surprised he was to get the note. "He really cares about me," Ron said, tears in his eyes. "God, I never thought he felt that way."

There are lessons here for all of us. The Inquirer newsroom deals with other people's tragedies every day.

Disease struck a healthy, vibrant man, and we all are reminded of the capricious nature of our lives. Value and think about what is important. The small moments of our lives are the ones that make the foundation for who we are and how we deal with others. Near the end, Ron knew this.

Many of you wrote Ron before he died. Your words touched him deeply and taught him and gave him some peace.

A few days after Christmas, Ron and I spoke, and he said he didn't think he could work New Year's Eve. He was tired and didn't think he could do all that he might have to do. "I've never taken a sick day, but I don't want to let the paper down," he said. He apologized to me. I told him that he had never let the paper down; he did not have to apologize to me. "You'll be back," I said, "Get your strength back."

He laughed, and said, "Rosey, remember I got hit by a truck."

On New Year's Eve, I called Ron and told him I'd come by. He told me he was feeling better and that he'd gone out for a walk to a health food store. I asked him if he wanted to come in. Jim Selzer and Clem Murray had suggested that we offer to pick him up and bring him into the office. As soon as I made the offer, his voice brightened and said, "Yes, yes, I'd love to come in.

That evening, Ron came in with Mary. He was smiling. He was happy, he was cracking jokes. His colleagues swarmed around him, happy to see him, to touch him. He was asked to look at the front page. He made a suggestion that we track the arrival of 2000 by listing capitals of the world around the major headline. It was a perfect Patel suggestion, unexpected, surprising and fresh. It made the paper better.

A typewriter was near his desk, a little Y2K joke. Many people in the newsroom have never used a typewriter. For many others, they share a memory of our youth, of carbon paper, the clatter of the newsroom, the visceral way you could write and type, as if you were playing a piano.

Just before he said good night that New Year's Eve and wished everyone a Happy New Year, Ron sat down at the typewriter and banged out one line. It was typed cleanly, freshly and perfectly. It was a call to the past, to his youth, to the present and the future. It read:

"This is a dream come true, to once again hear the gentle sound of type on copy paper."

Then Ron got up, took Mary by the arm, and said goodbye.

o o o o o

Eulogy for Ron Patel
By Maxwell King
Executive director, Heinz Endowment
Former editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1990-1997
Jan. 11, 2000

If you were around here back in the early 1970's, when Gene Roberts and Ron Patel and Gene Foreman and John Carroll and Steve Lovelady and Steve Seplow and a whole lot of the rest of us came to Philadelphia, you might remember that Ron Patel could be a boastful fellow. We used to sit around and chuckle at the fact that, given almost any excuse, Ron would tell you he was the best news editor in the land. We knew he was talented, but we thought: this guy has an over-inflated ego.

That was when The Inquirer was in a fight for its life with the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and no one knew how it would all end. The Sunday Inquirer was weak, in many ways the least interesting paper of the 7-day cycle, lacking strong news coverage, and short on interesting project stories, too.

Then Gene Roberts gave Ron the Sunday paper and, within months, it came to life. Ron quickly began to network throughout the paper, convincing all the editors to steer their strongest stuff to him, bartering page-one play, or metro-front play, to get the enterprise journalism he wanted. And he began to plan the week, following the most interesting news stories and calculating how to create fresh coverage over the weekend that would make his Sunday paper exciting and lively. As the paper strengthened, it began to grow. Week to week, you could watch the girth of the Sunday Inquirer expand as ad lineage drained out of the Bulletin and into our paper. And the circulation numbers headed the same way as The Inquirer capitalized on its new excitement by shifting readers from the Bulletin.

By the early 1980's, when the momentum had carried over to the daily Inquirer, it was clear that the Bulletin would lose this war.

And those of us who had thought Ron boastful now realized he was an extraordinarily creative and talented news editor. Ron Patel and Eddie Frank taught us all that a creative, visionary news editor can fashion an exciting newspaper experience that is far more than the sum of the newspaper's component parts. Ron played the newspaper like a symphony, tuning and practicing his instruments all week, cajoling, threatening and inspiring his musicians, bringing everything together on Sunday in a great concert of emotion, intelligence, and understanding.

And Ron was the maestro, using all his wiles and powers of manipulation to get what he wanted from the staff. He would be crazy Ron, throwing a temper tantrum in the middle of the newsroom, hurling grease pencils and paste pots while he screamed at the chief of the copy desk. All the while, a small smile played about his lips, revealing that he was not above using anger as one of his manipulator tools.

Or he could be Ron the salesman, convincing you that only your reporters could deliver the Sunday-strip project story that would make people stop dead in their tracks at the WaWa store, fishing in their pockets to get the right change to possess that front page and start reading it before they even got back their cars.

Eventually, we all realized that, like Muhammad Ali, Ron may have been boastful, but he also was the greatest. He was what he said he was: the best damn Sunday editor anywhere in the land. And now, like Muhammad Ali, his talent has faded

all too soon.

Ron Patel was always driven by his own sense of moment, his own sense of occasion. He planned all his papers and all his moves with the dramatist's flair for the moment, always working to create responses, impressions, and emotions. Knowing how he felt about occasions, I'm very glad to be able to reflect on his recent life and see that he was able to achieve and enjoy some of those moments:

His triumphant return to the village in India that was the ancestral home to his branch of the Patel family;

His 50^th birthday party celebration, planned and executed by Mary and his friends;

That very recent trip to Bermuda with his beloved wife Mary, a last chance to relax in the sun and enjoy life;

And, of course, the last night of the last year, Ron at the helm one last time, plotting the Millennium newspaper, the front page that would usher in the new age with a Ron Patel flair for the dramatic.

Good bye, Crazy Ron. Like one of your patented Sunday papers, you packaged a very full life into your 52 years.

Good bye, Ron Patel.

Eulogy for Ron Patel
By Gene Roberts
Professor, University of Maryland
Former editor, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 1972-1990
Jan. 11, 2000

It was 1973. I had been with The Inquirer less than six months. The new owners, the Knights, had just racked up their third consecutive year of losses. The Bulletin was expanding its daily lead and whacking away at The Inquirer's Sunday lead. Almost everything needed fixing - especially the News Desk.

Enter Ron Patel. Gene Foreman, the new managing editor, had known him at Newsday. "A bit temperamental," Gene said. "But, gosh, he's good." Strong words from Gene Foreman.

Almost immediately it was clear that Ron had found a home; but, especially important for the future of the paper, The Inquirer had found Ron. He loved fixing things, he loved stories, he loved newspaper people and, as much as any one, he helped shaped the vision - and believed deeply in it - that The Inquirer could be the greatest paper in the world.

In record time, he became the Sunday news editor, then the Sunday editor. It stopped being just the Sunday paper. It became Ron's Sunday Inquirer.

Within months, I felt I had known Ron all my life. I am a southerner, and he was like summertime in the south - mostly sunny, but with sudden rolls of thunder and flashes of lighting. He once, in a fit of exasperation, drop-kicked my wastepaper basket.

But his outbursts had little to do with ambition, ego, or pay raises. They were about obstacles he encountered in trying to put out a wonderfully readable and newsy paper. You'd better watch out if he had an idea for a strip across the top of the Sunday paper, but assignment editors wouldn't - or couldn't - put a reporter on the story.

But help him put out a great paper, and he radiated delight. If he'd had a tail like a puppy, he would have wagged it. He excited his staff, and the Sunday paper kept getting better - and better.

He, of course, loved putting his stamp on things. It was worth working weekends, years on end, to avoid bosses and bureaucracy.

If you weren't there in the rough, underdog years of 1973, 74, 75, 76, you'll never understand how much he did, how much he accomplished, the shambles he cleared up.

In theory, the first edition of the Sunday paper was supposed to be rolling in to the trucks by 4 p.m. But linotype operators were still manually setting classified ads at 4. This created a domino effect, and editions were late all night and into the morning. And this played into the Bulletin's hands.

Ron understood that step number one was to send down all but seven columns on Friday night. This helped everyone in the building understand that it was not the newsroom that was causing the delays. The paper had to move to a more modern system. Meanwhile, Ron knew that if the first edition got out on time, he could remake the paper to his heart's content, all night long if necessary, to get in the latest news. He learned to turn the front page around on a dime's worth of time. The Bulletin never knew what hit it. The Inquirer was always quicker and had more depth and verve.

For 27 years, Ron was as much as a part of The Inquirer as anyone who ever came through its doors.

He didn't just leave his imprint on Sundays. I think he may have left it always.

o o o o o

From: Mark Tatulli, cartoonist
To: Inquirer.Letters@phillynews.com
Sent: 1/11/00 3:41 AM
Subject: Ron Patel Editorial

Your recent editorial regarding Ron Patel, the Sunday section editor who succumbed to cancer, starts off by saying, "most of you don't know him..."

Well, I did know Ron Patel.

In addition to his Sunday duties, Ron was the editor of the comics. Ron loved comics. And he loved talking to cartoonists. That's where I come in.

In 1994 I had a fledgling comic strip entitled BENT HALOS which was with a small time syndicate out of Bizbee, Arizonia. Through a stroke of good luck, Ron agreed to meet with me and discuss my strip. I was scared to death, but Ron greeted me with a friendly smile and we sat and talked comics for about an hour. In the end I said, "You know, if my mom saw my comic in the Inquirer, that would make her the proudest lady in the land." Ron laughed and said, "That line just may have gotten you in!" One month later, my strip appeared in the Inky, Sunday and daily, replacing the retiring CALVIN & HOBBES.

With all the big time strips sitting on his desk, represented by all those big time syndicates, he chose mine...a nobody from South Jersey with about 12 newspaper clients and no major metropolitan newspapers to his credit. I just landed the 16th largest newspaper in the United States all because Ron Patel decided to give me a shot.

The strip lasted for 18 months (I quit because I could not entice any other big papers to take the chance that Ron had) and I called Ron to tell him the bad news. He understood and was very supportive and when I said, "I'll be back" he said, "I know you will."

I now have a new strip called HEART OF THE CITY, syndicated by one of the largest syndicates in the world, Universal Press, which is famous for introducing CALVIN & HOBBES, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, and DOONESBURY to the newspaper readers. I currently have around 115 clients (including the Inquirer) and my strip appears in newspapers all over the world. I never would have been able to land such an opportunity if Ron Patel hadn't given me the chance to produce my work on a daily basis; to see it every day in print, color on Sunday. I learned so much for my BENT HALOS experience, and I was able to parlay that into a career. To draw cartoons for a living, my greatest dream. All because a guy at the Inquirer, with big smile and a friendly handshake; a guy who loved comics and cartoonists, said, "yes."

Yeah, I knew Ron Patel. And on Tuesday, January 11th, I'm going to say Good Bye.

But I'll never forget how he changed my life forever.

o o o o o

The Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan. 8, 2000

Inquirer's Sunday editor, Ronald Patel, dies of cancer
Ronald Patel, 52, died yesterday of liver cancer.

By Julie Stoiber
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Ronald Patel, 52, a passionate editor whose flair for combining stories and pictures in vivid ways distinguished the Sunday Inquirer for much of the last three decades, died yesterday of liver cancer.

Mr. Patel, The Inquirer's Sunday editor, had a national reputation in the profession as a high-energy idea man dedicated to improving newspapers. Inquirer editors credit him with helping to revitalize the Sunday paper during its circulation wars with the Philadelphia Bulletin in the 1970s and early 1980s.

In the newsroom, Mr. Patel was famous for his fiery temper, his fondness for splashy, lapel-grabbing prose and headlines, and his personal dominance of the Sunday paper, which at times seemed a projection of his personality.

Poring over his computer screen, rejecting headlines that weren't sharp enough, murmuring nonstop to himself and his staff, he piloted the Sunday paper from the early "bulldog" edition, distributed Saturday mornings, to the Sports Final, which hit the street 18 hours later, frequently remaking pages along the way.

"He insisted that the paper be filled with stories and pictures that informed you, features that entertained you, and all manner of work that helped you understand your world a little better," said William J. Ward, The Inquirer's managing editor.

Mr. Patel was in his mid-20s when he came to Philadelphia in 1973. He was preceded by a reputation as a wunderkind earned at Newsday and the Detroit News.

"He could do everything," said Gene Foreman, retired deputy editor of The Inquirer. "He was a good copy editor, a superb designer, and very fast."

Eugene L. Roberts Jr. was editor of the paper at the time, and he saw a turnaround in Sunday circulation as key to beating the Philadelphia Bulletin, then The Inquirer's main rival. Mr. Patel was his choice for Sunday editor.

"He was almost perfect for the job," Roberts said. "He had a plan-ahead approach, but he also just absolutely came to life on a breaking story."

Mr. Patel's trademark was the "Sunday strip," a lively news-feature that was stripped across the top of the front page, often focusing on a person or family as a way of illustrating a trend.

Gains in Sunday circulation
Under Mr. Patel, the Sunday paper gained steam, and by the time The Bulletin folded in 1982, The Inquirer had an edge of 400,000 in Sunday circulation.

"The turning point in the war with the Bulletin was the Sunday paper," Roberts said.

Mr. Patel edited the Sunday paper from 1973 to 1986, when he became associate managing editor for features. He returned to the Sunday job in 1995.

A self-described streetwise kid from Detroit, where he worked as a meat cutter and a test-driver for Ford, Mr. Patel was scrappy. In his early years at the paper, he often got into shouting matches with colleagues. In recent years, he had mellowed.

He was also calm under pressure, a valuable but hardly universal quality among editors.

"He had great instincts on what to do in the most chaotic situations," said Inquirer editor Robert J. Rosenthal. "There was nothing he liked better than waking me up to tell me, in an always calm voice, that something extraordinary had happened, and that he was going to remake the paper between editions."

Maxwell E.P. King, former editor of The Inquirer and now executive director of the Heinz Endowments in Pittsburgh, likened Mr. Patel to the conductor of a symphony orchestra.

"He would go around all week checking all the departments, tuning all his instruments for the big concert," King said. "He thought very proactively about the paper. Instead of waiting for stories and pictures to come in, he was thinking about the news, convincing people to do stories."

Mr. Patel served as president of both the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and of the Newspaper Features Council.

Salvaging a press club
To many colleagues in the newsroom, Mr. Patel was a hero for single-handedly rescuing the city's press club, the Pen and Pencil Club, an after-hours hangout for journalists and others who worked odd schedules.

In early 1990, the club was housed in a rundown building just north of The Inquirer and was on the verge of collapse. Mr. Patel took over as its president, moved it to Center City, and nursed it back to financial health.

"He cared a lot about promoting camaraderie in our profession," said Mark Wagenveld, The Inquirer's Main Line editor.

Mr. Patel attended Wayne State University in Detroit. He got his start in journalism at the Royal Oak (Mich.) Tribune.

As a boy, he lived in Detroit's Far East Side, then overwhelmingly white. His father was an Indian immigrant who ran an electrical-appliance store. His mother, Joan, was an American of Polish descent. His father, Chhotabhai Ukabhai Patel, died when Ronald Patel was 3.

"I fought people who called me 'nigger' from my first day of kindergarten until my freshman year in college," Mr. Patel wrote in a 1993 article in The Inquirer Sunday magazine, in which he recounted his rediscovery of his Indian heritage. "I became flinty, tough, streetwise, and I was proud of it."

In 1991, Mr. Patel made a pilgrimage to his ancestral village of Medhad, India, where he learned that his father was a scion of a well-known land-owning family. In the article, Mr. Patel described the hero's reception he received when he reached the village.

"It was the rose petals that broke through my American resolve," he wrote. "As I enter the pavilion, they begin raining rose petals on me.. . . I am filled with the feeling that these are my people, my beginnings, and I am moved to tears."

Mr. Patel, who lived in the Barclay on Rittenhouse Square, was diagnosed with cancer in early November, and his health deteriorated rapidly thereafter.

His wife of nine months, Mary Frangipanni Patel, a political columnist for the weekly City Paper, said her husband was following city politics until the end and making plans for his recovery.

So determined was Mr. Patel to have a hand in The Inquirer's first Sunday edition of 2000 that he struggled into the newsroom on New Year's Eve, a week before his death.

Weak and hoarse, Mr. Patel sat by his old workstation, greeted a stream of colleagues, and conferred with news editor Charles Knittle, who was preparing the Jan. 2 Sunday paper.

"He knew what a moment was, and how to recognize an event," Knittle said.

One last time, Mr. Patel came up with an idea for crystallizing such a moment. He noted that the year 2000 was literally moving across the globe from east to west, touching off celebrations in city after city. Mr. Patel suggested printing a string of names (Auckland . . . Sydney . . . Tokyo) in gray-toned type above and below the main Page One headline - "2000: A Global Celebration." That is what the paper ran.

Because Mr. Patel's health deteriorated so swiftly, many of his friends learned only recently that he was ill, and were stunned to hear of his death.

Mort Walker, whose Beetle Bailey comic strip has run in The Inquirer for 45 years, found out Thursday that Mr. Patel was sick. He sat down to make a get-well card for the man he called "a good friend of cartoonists," and mailed it that day.

It featured all the Beetle Bailey characters, with the message: "We all came to wish you well."

In addition to his wife and his mother, Mr. Patel is survived by his daughter, Wendy, from a previous marriage; a stepson, Carter D. Morse Jr., from another marriage; a brother, Jerome; and a sister, Cathleen Lloyd. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

o o o o o

The Associated Press
Jan. 8, 2000

Ronald Patel , Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday editor, dies
Associated Press Newswires

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Ronald Patel , the nationally known Sunday editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, has died. He was 52.

Patel, who grew up in Detroit, died Friday of liver cancer.

Patel was famous around the newsroom for his fiery temper, penchant for splashy writing and bold headlines, and his personal dominance of the Sunday paper, which he revitalized during the paper's circulation wars with the Philadelphia Bulletin in the 1970s and early 1980s.

"The Sunday paper without Ron Patel is just unimaginable," said Inquirer reporter Tony Wood. "If you watched him work, he laid out the paper the way a reporter writes a story. He had a sense for what was important and what belonged where. He was a control freak of sorts, but he knew what he was doing."

Patel's trademark was the "Sunday strip," a news-feature stripped across the top of the front page that often focused on a person or family as a way of illustrating a trend.

Patel, who grew up in Detroit, attended Wayne State University in Detroit and began his journalism career at the Royal Oak (Mich.) Tribune. He had stints at Newsday and The Detroit News before arriving in Philadelphia in 1973.

"He could do everything. He was a good copy editor, a superb designer, and very fast," said Gene Foreman, retired deputy editor at the Inquirer.

Patel edited the Sunday paper from 1973 to 1986, when he became associate managing editor for features. He returned to the Sunday paper in 1985.

Patel was past president of the National Features Council and the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors. Newspaper syndicates, which distribute comics, crossword puzzles and other features, frequently sought Patel's opinion on the market value of a new concept.

Local journalists appreciated Patel for single-handedly rescuing the city's press club, the Pen and Pencil Club, from the brink of bankruptcy. Patel became president of the organization in 1989, attracted new investors and moved the club to its present Center City location from a rundown building in North Philadelphia.

"Ron was really looking forward to the Republican Convention," said past club president, Ron Goldwyn, a reporter at the Daily News and a regular at the Pen and Pencil. "He had all kinds of schemes and dreams for us as the watering hole of the nation's news media for a week this summer."

Patel was diagnosed with cancer in early November, and his health deteriorated rapidly thereafter. But he managed to struggle into the newsroom on New Year's Eve, a week before his death, and came up with the paper's Page One headline to mark the new millennium.

Patel is survived by his wife and mother, a daughter, Wendy, from a previous marriage; a stepson, Carter D. Morse Jr., from another marriage; a brother, Jerome; and a sister, Cathleen Lloyd.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

o o o o o

Houston Chronicle
June 20, 1993

Editor's note: American-born journalist C.R. Patel never knew much about his father's homeland of India or about his father, who died when he was 3. A trip to India taught him much about his heritage, his father and even himself.

Photos:
1. American-born journalist C.R. Patel discovered his rich heritage when he journeyed to his father's native India (Credit: Nilish B. Patel)
2. Patel arrived in the village of Medhad on a bullock cart, surrounded by well-wishers. Villagers set off fireworks while children offered gifts of coconuts (Credit: Z. Mehta/Gujarat Sun)
3. Young women of the Medhad village, known as the Dancing Dolls, prepared to perform at a welcoming ceremony for American journalist C.R. Patel (Credit: Vyomesh Byatt)
4. C.R. Patel arrives at pavilion during celebration in Medhad, India
5. 1949 photograph shows Chhotabhai Ukabhai Patel with Ron (C.R.) Patel and Kathy Patel
6. Journalist C. R. Patel with his cousin, Navin Patel, right, and Pramukh Swami Maharaj (credits: Z. Mehta/Gujarat Sun)

The Land of My Father

By C . R . PATEL
C.R. Patel is associate managing editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

AGAIN, it was time. As one of the family had done through four decades, the graying businessman delicately arranged the seeds, sweets and breads on a ceremonial tray. This was the shraddha, the Hindu remembrance of the dead.

One of the family had died far from home. And while his ashes were in the holy river, who knew whether his soul was at peace? The shraddha would tell. Navin Patel would perform the ritual at his home north of Bombay, and the birds might come, telling how the soul was resting.

For 13 of the 41 years, this ritual had been the solemn duty of Navin's father, Jay. He had undertaken it in remembrance of his brother, the brightest boy of the family, who went to college abroad, who fled the British Raj at the moment its boot rested hardest on India, and who died in America. Then, on his deathbed, Jay had entrusted Navin with the shraddha, and with all the bright boy's letters home. Navin was to keep the letters, his father said, for one day someone would come for them. Navin was to continue the ritual.

With Navin this day was his daughter, Madhavi, so pretty at 12, a student of religious dance. Together they brought the tray outside, setting it down under the November sky to wait for the birds.

Immediately, the crows descended, screeching, cawing, wheeling over the shraddha. In moments, all was gone. In moments more, all the crows were gone.

"What can this mean?'' Navin was baffled.

"Chhotabhai is coming,'' said his daughter.

Invitation arrives
The letters on the peacock stationery had begun arriving at my office in Philadelphia in the spring of 1991. "Respected Mr. Ronald Patel ,'' they began, "please, please, please come to the Cultural Festival of India, to take place outside New York City in the summer. Thousands of Indians now living in the United States will be there, and if you would but come, you would learn so much about the land of your father.''

The land of my father. I knew so little about it, but then, I knew so little about him. He had died in 1950, when I was only 3, leaving behind a small business he'd built in Detroit. Even when I was a teen, there were simply no other Indians around to ask about things. My mother, whom he'd met at her work one day in 1934,hadn't asked him much about his past, and he never said much about it to my brother or sister. To me, the youngest, he was no more than a snapshot: a Kodak Brownie print of Dad under a rakish, wide-brimmed hat, standing at the front porch with his children.

Without him, I had what might pass for an all-American childhood in the Motor City: I lived in the militantly all-white Far East Side. I went to Guardian Angels Catholic Church. I played baseball, basketball, football - and played out my curiosity by becoming editor of the newspaper in junior high and high school. I was always aware, though, that I was not like all the others in my neighborhood. I was darker.

I fought people who called me "nigger'' from my first day of kindergarten until my freshman year in college, and I learned to beat on people with a ferocity that might save me from worse fights. I became flinty, tough, streetwise, and I was proud of it. I was so American that when you said "swami,'' I thought of Johnny Carson as Carnac the Magnificent.

Which is why the peacock letterhead set off my suspicions. Listed down the side as festival sponsors were a clutch of East Coast politicians (Daniel P. Moynihan?), a number of people named Patel, and two "swamis.'' Why would I put myself in the hands of a group that included "swamis''? Too often I had read of Indian religious gurus with more Rolls-Royces than ethics, with more larceny than love in their hearts.

Still, I was drawn to the Cultural Festival of India. Of course I was wary: I decided to check things out, to investigate, to be a journalist. The first sign that this group was looking for money, I would split. Yet perhaps in this crowd of strangers, even among some called "swami,'' I might come to understand something of my father, my unknown dad, Chhotabhai Ukabhai Patel.

And so I met India just off Exit 10 of the New Jersey Turnpike in August 1991. The campus of Middlesex County College had been turned into a monument to Indian monuments, and the parking lots were full of cars carrying Indian families to what looked like the equivalent of a state fair. My teen-age daughter and I followed the crowds to the entrance, equipped with our VIP invitation and feeling uncomfortably American in the midst of so many people speaking in the babble of another tongue.

There were Indian food stands, Indian craft stands, Indian book stalls and, most interesting to me, Indians everywhere. Up to this time, I had spoken to probably five Indians in all my 43 years.

At the VIP tent, we were assigned a tour guide, Kenny Jajal, a product-development engineer for a New York City textile company. He walked my daughter and me about the grounds, explaining every exhibit in terms of Indian lore as well as how it had been constructed here in extreme detail. Prakesh Shah, the head of an investment company in Bridgewater, N.J., was introduced to me, as was B.N. Patel, the chairman of a chemical company in Houston. Back in the VIP tent, there was Giresh Patel, a pharmacist in a Brooklyn hospital who was the official spokesman for the event. And there were even more Patels, from owners of motels to engineers, real-estate brokers and physicians, from New York to California to Michigan to Texas.

"Would you like to meet Pramukh Swami Maharaj, the inspirer of this festival?'' Kenny Jajal asked.

No sooner had I said yes than I was surrounded by a flurry of saffron-robed monks. My daughter was carefully separated from me, to remain behind with the women in the VIP area. I was swept along with the monks to another outbuilding behind the VIP area, beckoned down a long hallway lined by more monks, and finally, amid the scent of roses, seated cross-legged before a small, elderly man reposed on a futon-like cassock in an otherwise bare room. He had very soft eyes and very soft hands and a very soft voice that made you lean forward to hear what he might be saying.

Another, named Young Swami, appeared at my side to translate that Swami Maharaj was asking my impression of the festival. I paid appropriate compliments. Then Young Swami began to question me about what I knew of my father, what I knew of being a Patel.

"Pretty much nothing,'' I said. "I have a few documents here that my mother found recently. They show my father arrived in the United States in 1919.''

Young Swami looked over the copies, and he read parts of the immigration papers to Swami Maharaj. The monks who were surrounding us took notes, and the Patels who had come with me peeked over the monks' shoulders to see for themselves the curious record of Chhotabhai (pronounced CHOAT-a-bye) Patel. "We know of an Indian sailor who landed in Baltimore in the 1800s and died on the dock,'' said one of the Patels. "But we had no idea there was a Patel or any Indian like him."

An honored guest
One of the monks reminded Swami Maharaj of the need to begin the public event of the afternoon. It was time for all to go. "You must come back to be honored,'' Young Swami said. "Swami Maharaj is most interested in your story and about your father. He holds these festivals to teach children of Indians outside India about their land. You have so much to learn about it. We can show you so much.'' There was a general murmur of approval from the Patels gathered around me.

"Dad, let's get out of here,'' my daughter said when I met her back at the VIP area. "This place is weird.''

A few days later, I returned to the festival by myself to be honored, as Young Swami had asked. Thousands of people were seated under an immense tent on the college green for this event, and from my introduction I learned that the Patels in the United States had found me through reading Who's Who in America. It was also becoming apparent that the Sanstha, as Swami Maharaj's followers were known, was the socio-religious group for Patels not only in the United States (there are temples in Brooklyn, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Jose, Chicago, Houston, Dallas and Boston), but also throughout the world.

"Pramukh Swami is a Patel, you know,'' said Kenny Jajal.

While I was on stage, Swami Maharaj sat on a raised set of cushions in the front row of the audience, and Young Swami again arrived to lead me to him. When Swami Maharaj smiled at me, Young Swami began to glow: "Oh, Swami is so glad to see you. He knows you have other questions for him.''

I explained to Swami Maharaj that I had been very suspicious at our first meeting, that I had made the trip solely to check out the validity of this alleged Cultural Festival of India. I told him I had been impressed by the intelligent and successful people I had met on the first visit and by how much they revered him.

He only nodded. He asked about my family. We talked about children. "Family and children are very important to Swami,'' Young Swami said. I told him about a child writing to the Philadelphia Inquirer's Kid's Talk column with a question about the meaning of life. Swami Maharaj went into a rhapsody, and the scribe monks scribbled furiously to keep up with his words.

Young Swami said to me: "Oh, Swami Maharaj gives such a wonderful answer. The meaning of life is in the family, to leave behind a better existence for your family.''

The Beatles paid millions for this, I thought.

Swami Maharaj gave me presents - a rose from the bowl of roses at his side, a strand of prayer beads and a garland of sandalwood, the fragrant, sacred tree of India.

"Come to India for my next festival,'' Swami Maharaj said, with Young Swami as interpreter. "Come and I will take care of you, I will help find your family for you.''

For all my life, I had had no interest in going to India, none at all. If I were to travel that far, I'd told my wife and two kids, I would rather see the pyramids in Egypt than risk the rejection of the land of my father. He might have been a high-caste Indian, but he had married an American woman. That could make me a half-caste, a man without a place in Indian society. What kind of welcome would I receive under those customs?

Also, a division had arisen between my mother and the Indian relatives in 1950 over whether my father's body would be cremated and his ashes shipped back to India. My mother yielded, but there had been no contact for the decades after. If I had any family left, would they really care to see me?

What I knew about my father's time in America seemed a good indication that his family in India must have been of some quality. Growing up, I was told that he had come to America from Baroda, India, to go to college, traveling on his family's money. He had traveled the United States for quite a while before settling in Detroit, where he opened an appliance store and did electrical contracting. In a partnership with a contractor, he had built the house in which we lived, along with a number of other homes in the neighborhood. And we were the first family on the block to have a TV, since he sold them. To my mother and her family, he was "Pat,'' a quiet, thoughtful person who neither smoked nor drank.

Because my father was a college-educated man, I was to go to college, even though no one else in the family had yet. But with only limited funds, I had to settle for the local campus of Wayne State University. I couldn't go to New York City, where, my mother said, my father had gotten his degree.

And that was it, the extent of what I knew of Chhotabhai Patel. A set of addresses, a travelogue, not a man.

"Tell me what you find out from the Indian festival,'' my mother had said when she sent me my father's immigration documents, which she'd found at the bottom of a dresser drawer. "I'm curious to know myself about that part of India.''

She'd meant Baroda, as Dad said in conversation. She hadn't noticed that the papers didn't cite his home as Baroda, a city of 1 million you can find on any map of India. The official record said Medhad, a name I could not find in even the biggest atlas.

What was I supposed to think, then, when I answered the phone last September, a year after the Cultural Festival of India, and heard Young Swami say in a breathless rush: "We have found your family in Medhad. It is a village outside Baroda. Swami knew of it. Your family has been to the temple. Today they saw Swami Maharaj, and they are anxiously awaiting you. Come to the festival opening Akshardham and they will be there.''

It was ludicrous: This man I'd met over a summer weekend was luring me across an ocean to celebrate a monument to a religion I had not embraced. Could this be the final trick by the Sanstha before they reached deep into my pocket? I asked my wife. In that part of India, I had learned, everyone who owns land is called Patel. How could I be sure that the Patels found by the Sanstha were not just any old Patels?

"What does it matter?'' my wife said, pushing me on a plane two months later. "You can always tell them to buzz off. You're pretty good at that. And this way you'll see India no matter what.''

An uneasy visit
Nov. 24; everyone at home is preparing for Thanksgiving, just two days away. On the other side of the world, I have spent the full day 100 miles north of Bombay touring Akshardham (House of the Lord, or Heaven), a monument built to last 1,000 years, to teach generations of Indians of their past glory, in hopes of inspiring them to glory once more. The 6,000 metric tons of pink sandstone came from the same source as the Taj Mahal; 8 million man-hours of volunteer labor have fashioned them into a shrine and education center of staggering proportion and beauty. I'm celebrating the opening with 350,000 people, and yet I feel uneasy, suspicious, alone.

I'm waiting for the promised meeting with my family. "They are coming,'' I am told repeatedly. But they are not here. It is about 40 miles from Baroda, where my cousin supposedly lives, to the festival site of Gandhigard, the capital city of Gujarat State. And it is a difficult road to travel, I am told. But as night falls on the festival, I begin to doubt that they ever will arrive, if ever they left.

Throughout the day, I have been driven everywhere by Vyomesh Byatt, an Indian industrialist assigned by Swami Maharaj to translate for me. Vyomesh has been upbeat all day, but even he seems a little down as he drops me off at the hotel. As I head toward the elevator, he stops by the festival's liaison desk in the hotel lobby. Suddenly, Vyomesh rushes toward me: "Young Swami just called. Your family is here. We must go back immediately to the reception room.''

There is a special waiting room set aside for the guests of Swami Maharaj at Akshardham. It is considered a holy place, so you must remove your shoes at the door as though you were entering a temple. Ornate, gilt wood furniture with silken cushions is arranged on a pale blue carpet under, at this hour, a garish fluorescent glow. There are three conversation areas in this room, and in one of them three men are gathered around Young Swami. One is taller than most Indians, with a ragged look to his face and hair. One is fatter than most Indians, with a oily look to him. And one . . . .

One looks like my father.

"This is Navin Patel,'' Young Swami says, "your cousin.'' The others are friends who drove Navin to the festival. They speak English, but haltingly, so there is an awkwardness to the introductions. There is a stiffness to the entire moment until we settle into the chairs, Navin and I sitting face to face. I see a slightly plump, slightly balding Indian businessman. What he sees, he would later tell his family, is a very large American.

"How is your mother, Joanna?'' he asks. "And your sister, Kitya, and Jerror, your brother?''

He knows their names, I think. He can't pronounce them, but he knows Joan, Kathy and Jerry.

"I know of you all, from your father's letters,'' he says.

"Letters?'' I say.

"Oh yes, we have been saving your father's letters for all these years. I have them here.''

Navin picks up from the couch a small white plastic bag and opens it with care. From it, he takes a card and hands it to me. It is a Christmas card, with the date 1947 on the back and some writing in strange swirls. Navin points to one line: "This is where your father says he has a new son, Ram, or Ronald.''

There are other letters. One is on the letterhead of C.U. Patel, Times Square Station, New York, New York, dated 1921. One is in my mother's writing. It tells of my father's funeral.

We spend a few minutes looking at the letters, turning them over, noting the dates. That is about all I can read without knowing Gujarati, the language in which they are written. Navin and I are starting to feel familiar with each other when suddenly we are summoned to see Swami Maharaj. He has set aside a few moments for us now, having heard that Patel has met Patel, interrupting his busy night of seeing supplicant after supplicant.

We enter the chambers of Swami Maharaj next door. My cousin and his friends drop to bow to him. Two monks bring a chair forward for me, so that I will not have to sit cross-legged in the Indian fashion of all others in the room. Young Swami tells the assemblage about the meeting and how we know now that Ronald Patel belongs to the village of Medhad, India.

Swami Maharaj nods to each visitor as a blessing. He smiles over at me. There are some awkward laughs as the festival photographer arranges us for a photo: Swami, cousin and me. And then it is time for Swami Maharaj to receive yet another devoted follower, one from the long line outside his door that we had passed by.

It is also time for Navin to go, the trip back being worse in the dark. I want to take the letters from him, but I hesitate. He seems to want to hold onto them. It may be his right, I think. They were written to his family.

"When you come to Baroda,'' he says, "we can go over these letters. I will have copies made for me, and you may take these.

"On Thursday I will show you Baroda. And on Friday, we will go to the village and see where your father was born.''

o o o o o

Today, on this pleasantly warm day in the post-monsoon season of India, I am to meet the memory of my father.

I am sitting in a bullock cart on the dirt road to the village of Medhad, about 60 miles north of Bombay. The cart driver is dressed in a military uniform. The two bulls are wearing garlands of flowers, and I am wearing garlands of flowers. There are so many more flowers on the cart that I can smell nothing else, and the roses and chrysanthemums draped on me are slightly cool and refreshing against my neck.

In front of me is a procession of the villagers of Medhad: first a few men to set off fireworks as we move along the trail; then the children, carrying coconuts as offerings to me; then the women; then a band blaring wild wails of Indian music; then the men; and lastly me, on the cart, surrounded by relatives.

Looking around at the earthen-brick homes on the path to Medhad, at the crowd clothed in a tapestry of colors, at the dust rising in the air as each foot shuffles, I think of the fading Kodak snapshot of my father at home, my only previous link with him. I know now that I am in his land, the exotic, faraway India of tigers, elephants and cobras, of rail-thin beggars and of reincarnation. And I realize how little I had known of him, and how I had never felt that so strongly before.

The procession begins, passing first under an archway of gay fabric stretched over the road, then under a banner reading, in English, "Village of Medhad Welcomes Mr. Ronald.'' We lurch on awhile, then stop, lurch and stop, paced by the fireworks arcing into the sky ahead. The bulls stop whenever the fireworks go off.

The "Surrounding Peoples'' are in the crowd, I am told, people who work these lands as nomads and who were lured here by word-of-mouth sweeping the region about a lost son returning to India. They, too, had heard of how my cousin, Navin Patel, had performed the shraddha, the Hindu remembrance for the dead, last year in honor of my father and in it had read an omen of my coming.

The dust envelops us as we move on; we are traveling in a cloud. Children run back and forth, racing to the front of the procession to see the fireworks and back to the rear to see me bumping along.

Petting the bulls
We reach the village and pause before a wildly colorful tent stretching the length of a school playground. I step from the cart and give a little half-wave to the crowd, which now fills the surrounding area. I pause for a second to give the bulls a pet, as I would one of my dogs or cats. The band continues to wail. I make my way toward the tent, and then something happens in my heart.

The rose petals, I believe. It was the rose petals that broke through my American resolve. As I enter the pavilion, they are raining rose petals on me. Suddenly gone is the notion that I am a stranger here; no more am I alone in this world. I am filled with the feeling that these are my people, my beginnings. And I am moved to tears.

I am led to a stage inside the pavilion. Over it hang two banners, again in English: "Villagers of Medhad Glad to Receive You'' and "Hearty Welcome Home to Mr. Ronald.'' The stage is draped with garlands of more chrysanthemums and roses and carpeted with fine Indian fabrics. The crowd files in behind me, filling all the seats, squatting on the ground in any empty corner of the tent, spilling out of the pavilion. Men, mostly, gather in front of the stage. Women gather on one side. The band takes up another side. And beyond the seated women, 30 or so mothers with babies and toddlers stand apart so as not to create a disturbance.

Village girls dance
Eight girls of the village step forward to dance and sing a song especially for my visit. They are in their best saris of crimson and cobalt blue, and they play cymbals and chant in thin voices. Next, three kindergarten-age children sing a song and make bows to me. Everyone smiles at the sight of the little figures kneeling on the ground and bowing their heads in time with the song. Then come the "Dancing Dolls.''

Once a year, after the monsoon, the young and beautiful women of the village perform a three-day dance to ensure a good farming season. The dance is done from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. for the three nights. This show for me is a special fourth occasion for the Dolls to perform. They are truly beautiful in their best saris of deep burgundy, royal blue and creamy yellow, all adorned with silver threads. They dance a very long time, though fortunately not for seven hours.

A hymn to the region's religious leader, Swami Maharaj, follows, as do speeches by the leaders of the village, by Swami's emissary and by my cousin. All the speeches are in Gujarati, and only some of what is said is translated to me. All are tributes, I am told, as are the flowers that follow.

Each notable of the village, including every Patel, places a garland around my neck. Again and again, a villager climbs the stairs to the stage and places a necklace of roses and chrysanthemums on me, again and again until I cannot be seen behind the flowers.

Giving a speech
I give a little speech. I say, truthfully, that all I had planned to say had been swept from my mind by the wonder of their welcome. I say I understand now how my father had summoned the courage to leave India, to be the first Indian to live in the United States as far as anyone has traced. He had courage, I say, because he knew that no matter what he did or what was said of him, he had the love of his village to make him feel whole. I thank them for having such love for my father and say that I consider the songs, dances and flowers to be praise for him, not for me at all.

For the first time in my life, I speak as the son of my father, the son of Chhotabhai.

From the pavilion I go to see the family home. It is a fine home by Indian standards, with rooms on two large floors and a third-floor patio that is used as living space during the many months without rain. It commands the best views in the village, looking down on the Vishwamurti River passing through the fields. From there I go to visit some of my relatives.

My every step is followed by a crowd of villagers as I go from home to home, through the dusk into the night.

Beyond my relatives, every other villager asks, through my cousin, for me to bless his home, to sit for a moment in it and be honored with sweets or nuts or religious markings of red powders. After trailing me for so long, the children have learned to say "Hello,'' and they are now shaking hands with each other in the American way, giggling all the while, saying, "Hello.''

Stopping to visit
Along the way, I am saying a hello of my own: At various stops my relatives, and even non-relatives, offer me the memories in which my father lives.

Chhotabhai Ukabhai Patel was born in Medhad in 1900. He was the third son of Ukabhai Kuber Patel, a landholder in the town and a close friend of the Gaekwar (maharajah) of Baroda. The closeness of Ukabhai's friendship with the maharajah is confirmed by remembrances of the rajah's giving him the use of his silver pagoda for an elephant on Ukabhai's wedding, and of the rajah's giving a wedding present of an additional 500 acres outside Medhad. The family story also says that Ukabhai gave 425 of those acres to poorer families, keeping only 75 as an amount he felt comfortable with.

Each recollection adds some detail or nuance to the emerging portrait of my father, but as I meet each elderly villager, I ask my cousin if this is the one, the one man I have been most anxious to meet. No, no, no, I am told. I must wait to see him in the home of the current village leader, his son. Finally, we are there, coming from the dark pathways into a room overly bright with fluorescent light.

Lines of nine decades
Inside, sitting on a bed in the far corner of the room, is a thin, frail, white-haired man with the lines of nine decades sunk deeply in his face. He is Ranchodbhai Babubhai Patel, and he is 96 years old.

He and my father played together as boys.

His body is obviously exhausted, but his eyes are bright as he reaches for my hand. As I sit next to him, surrounded by villagers packed into the small home, my guides scream questions into Ranchodbhai's ear. He answers in a whisper, often touching me as he does.

He remembers so much:

Chhotabhai was known early on for his intelligence - the villagers gave him the honorary title of "lawyer'' when he was a boy, marking him with the highest educated occupation known at that time. Chhotabhai and Ranchodbhai carried bricks together to help build the village temple. Chhotabhai went off to school in Baroda at about the age of 14.

At the time, Medhad was reachable only by a footpath. It was about 11 miles along the path to the city, a prohibitive distance to travel daily. That is why Chhotabhai spent most of his teen years in Baroda, returning home only every 15 days.

Rajah at work
Matching Ranchodbhai's recollections with the few written family records, I see now that after Baroda High School, in April 1919, Chhotabhai passed the exams to enter the University of Bombay. But someone or something intervened, and Chhotabhai instead had a ticket to Oxford and to England. Again, it must have been the family's relationship to the rajah at work.

The leader of Baroda at that time was one of the richest men in the world, and he was close to the British. Also, the British had begun to search India for young leaders who might be suitable for further British education. They planned to train a new generation for the Indian Civil Service (sometimes called the Heavenborn) to take charge of the country as lackeys to the English. At the same time, April 1919 lives forever in the Indian mind as the date of the Amritsar massacre, when thousands of unarmed Indians were mowed down by British machine gunners upset that the Indians were not clearing an area quickly enough. More than 400 of them were killed.

Chhotabhai was a courageous boy to risk trading the simple life of an Indian village for England. And then to have summoned the further courage to sneak around the British, to board a boat for Canada almost immediately after arriving in England, and to find a way into the United States - that obviously was an astonishing feat to those back home.

On his bed in the corner of the overly bright room, Ranchodbhai recalls the day of Chhotabhai's departure. It was a special day for all in the village. As though recounting an epic myth, he whispers a detailed account.

It was Shravan Sudh Satam Samvat and Shittla Satam when Chhotabhai left, he says, using the Gujarati words that are unique for each day of the year. (The swamis translate that to be in September of 1919, which agrees with immigration papers my father filed saying he arrived in the United States in November of 1919.) Chhotabhai that day was tired of the long trek to Baroda by the path, so as he left Medhad, downstream from Baroda on the river, he took a different path to the train. He shed all but a few clothes, swam the river with his bags, emerged on the other side and walked three miles to a village that had a train station. Yet another example of how innovative Chhotabhai was, Ranchodbhai says. Chhotabhai caught the train to Bombay and was never seen again.

Mind is spinning
His story done, my father's friend turns to me. He places his hand on my head to bless me. I touch his robe, gently, and leave his home in silence, my mind spinning with the wonder of how my father's existence had meant so much to his friends and family - and so little, up to now, to me.

Driving away from the village, we stop for a moment at a turn in the road so that Navin can show me a part of the family lands. By the headlights of the car, while standing on a stone bench beside the road, I look out on a grove of lentil plants and acres of farmland beyond.

"How long has this land been in the family?'' I ask him.

"Six hundred years,'' he says.

One heck of a man
That night, back in my room at Baroda's Hotel Rama, I say aloud to the empty air, "Chhotabhai, you were one heck of a man.'' I can see what a unique life he lived, and I wish he'd lived to tell me about it. I would not have grown up so tough.

Earlier in the day, Navin and my Indian translator, Vyomesh Byatt, collaborated on translating a few of my father's letters for me. It was a torturous and time-consuming task because of his penmanship and his antiquated Gujarati phrases. "He makes his N's like V's,'' Vyomesh complained. But as he made his way through the letters, Vyomesh also said, "You know, I'm really coming to like this guy.''

I pick up the letters from the dressing table and once again turn them over in my hands and in my mind.

My father wrote to his brother as if he were the eldest son, though he was the youngest. He told his family to learn English, "because you must know English to do business in this world.'' In 1924, he promised the village a Ford tractor if the villagers would but learn Western economic ways. In 1938, he advised his brother on how to improve village life by building a mill so that the villagers could transport their harvest more easily as flour rather than as grain.

His letters home also told of how he was struggling in America to become something. He wrote of spending the early 1920s in New York City, attempting to develop an import business for Indian goods. He wrote of traveling around the country for a time, and of stopping in Detroit in the mid-1920s to open a store selling radios. In the 1930s, he struggled with the Depression,like everyone else, but he also found that being an Indian carried a special burden.

No justice for Indian
"But there is no justice for the Indian in America,'' he wrote. "The Negro is treated better than me before the magistrate.'' This was when he tried to sue for payments due him.

Navin's father, Jay, read many letters to the village, I had been told, and these were the letters Navin handed over to me, 18 in all beginning in 1920. At the top of the first one is the address Michigan State School, Detroit, Michigan. The letter begins: "I have completed my education.''

How odd, I thought. The Detroit campus of Michigan's state university became Wayne State University. My father and I had the same college life after all.

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"Tell Swami about the coincidences,'' Janak Dave urged me. He had come with me to Medhad as Swami Maharaj's representative, but we were now back at Akshardham, where he is the head of the philosophy college. "Tell him about the shraddha, tell him about how they saved the letters.''

When told, Swami Maharaj smiled widely. He motioned for me to move forward; he placed a delicate circle of fragrant beads around my neck; he handed me another strand of beads ("for your wife''); he washed my palm to forgive me all my past mistakes; he gave me a portion of his food, "the food of God'' that followers hold in reverence. "This,'' he said, "will be the journey of your life.''

Interpreted as blessing
I became front-page news across that region of India. The reporters made much of how I had arrived in my village as Lord God Rama had returned to his village in Indian mythology. The photograph of my slight wave to the crowd as I stepped from the bullock cart was interpreted as the blessing that Rama gives to his people.

Sure enough, looking at a statue of Rama, you can see that he does hold out a hand in that way.

My momentary stroking of the one bull, I read, was viewed by the villagers as a lingering hug, marking my reverence for the sacred cattle of India.

On the day I left India, Ranchodbhai Patel, who had preserved the legend of my father for 73 years, died.

The coincidences were so numerous that many of my friends and relatives in the United States would become spooked by "all that Indian mysticism.''

But there was one more: For years I have gone by C . R . Patel , for several silly reasons. But I also liked it for a family cause. C.U. Patel, my father, attempted to become a journalist while in New York City, and he was rejected - there was no place for Indians on the American newspapers of the 1920s. C . R . Patel is fairly well-known as an editor in America. I figured the C. was for Dad.

Little did I know that I should have always used it somewhere in my name. The father's name is commonly the middle name for an Indian boy.

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