Ted Patrick

Edwin Hill Patrick (September 3, 1901–March 11, 1964) was the key American editor for Holiday, an influential travel and literary magazine published by the Curtis Publishing Company. Under Patrick's editorship from 1946 and until his death in 1964, the magazine published 215 issues and grew circulation to one million subscribers.

Career

Ted Patrick's early career included a stint as a semi-professional baseball player and as a sports reporter for the Rutherford Republican. In 1928, he joined Young & Rubicam as an advertising copywriter. One of his contributions in a national magazine showed a steel-helmeted skeleton captioned 'Cornfed Kid from the West.'

Patrick founded the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) in 1963 and served as the first elected Chairman. He hoped that the organization would keep help "to strengthen the influence of magazines as a primary source of information and ideas." A fellow magazine executive stated of Patrick's appointment, "This man has the respect of the industry for the kind of job he's done at Holiday. And he'll get things done for the industry." The letter from the advertisers read, "...We applaud your belief that "an editor's only boss is the reader. We applaud your indifference to the pressures of advertisers and the heckling of publishers...Nobody else could have created a magazine which is equally distinguished for its graphics and writing. Cartier-Bresson and Steinbeck, Arnold Newman and William Golding, Slim Aarons and Seán Ó Faoláin, John Lewis Stage and Laurens van der Post. Month after month, year after year, you entertain us and you enthrall us...."

Personal life Ted Patrick was married to Vera Yereance who died a few short months before Patrick.

Patrick was described by Vanity Fair as an alcoholic.

Patrick was a member of Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, an exclusive club for wine enthusiasts founded in 1934. Ted lived at 455 East 51st Street in New York City, New York.

Books Patrick wrote for magazines. Apart from Forewords, his work only rarely appeared between hard covers.

Great Restaurants of America (co-authored with Silas Spitzer). Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1960. The Thinking Dog's Man. New York: Random House, 1964. (published posthumously)