“How does a prospective high school artist go about preparing for the future?” This is the lead to a piece published in The RB Clarion on November 10, 1977. “Rankin prepares for art career By Michele VanOrt.” At the time, Patrick “Pat” Rankin (Class of ’78) was a senior at Riverside-Brookfield High School in Riverside, Illinois.
So was I. As a soon-to-be journalism major, writing a story about Pat preparing for his future is how I went about preparing for my future. I believe this 37-line PopTart is my first published profile piece. It’s one reason why I kept it. I not only kept the Clarion issue in which it appeared, but I also kept the galleys.
Pat was a worthy subject. To know him was to know he was a talented artist. Even fellow R-Bites who didn’t know him personally knew his work. According to the profile, “Rankin spent his summer days painting inside the school [including giant] room numbers and a mural in the boys’ PE office.” It’s a tight little piece, answering the who-what-when-where-why-and how mandates of journalism 101. Ultimately, I think the process taught me less about Pat than it did about navigating a career in journalism. Our advisor, Mr. Matthews, only agreed to include it in Vol. 50, No. 5 because I sold the Mr. Floyd’s Slack Shak ad that appears on the same page
Lesson: It doesn’t matter how well you write. It matters if you’re able to sell it.
Welcome to a Career in the Arts
I discovered this keepsake, Pat’s story, during the winter months of the pandemic when I, like the rest of the world, negotiated life in confinement. My husband of 30 years, our yorkiepoo Lemmon, and I sheltered in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, our home base and place of business. It was the first time in decades that we had stayed in one home for a full twelve months. Our lifestyle involved a lot of packing and movement and offered very little time to sort through accumulated memories and artifacts. Forced isolation, however, forced me to finally unpack ALL my baggage.
In the late autumn and early winter months of 2020, before I was fully vaccinated, I gave myself a birthday present. I opened a 60-year-old treasure chest containing a lifetime of collectibles. A time capsule of my existence, it was an emotional Pandora’s Box that included both lowlights and highlights. And I had nothing but Covid-19 time to wander into every corner.
The Vol. 50, No. 5 issue of the RB Clarion and the carbon copy galley of Pat’s story were among the scads of photos, certificates, drawings, ticket stubs, and newspaper clippings I’d saved. Seeing it brought me back to the dingy second-floor corridor of Riverside-Brookfield High School, a place filled with teenage sweat and insecurities.
I opened the eight-page, stapled booklet and found Pat on page three. There he was in black and white halftone, all young and adorable, posing in front of “his masterpiece.” I couldn’t resist. I snapped a photo and sent it to him via Facebook Messenger.
“Hey, man! Remember this?”
He did. And that’s how our conversation began.
What I have learned about Pat Rankin through what became an extended interview over the last few years is that he is far more than a gifted and multi-talented artist. He is smart. He is funny. And he is exceedingly kind. He may even be an angel.
CORRECTION
First of all, labeling Pat a “prospective” high school artist in the RB Clarion piece was not accurate. Pat was born an artist. To say he was “self-taught” would even be wrong. Artists like Pat don’t learn their skills. They practice them. By our senior year, Pat was on the verge of figuring out how to get all the colors of his remarkable palette to paint himself into a stable and sustainable lifestyle.
I’m happy to report he has succeeded.
Pat is a Fine Arts Specialist and ongoing contractor who creates original designs for permanent installations. Statuary is his specialty. He has a BFA in Large Scale Public Art from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a Certificate in Engineering from Triton College. He has had stints with Richard Rush Studios, National Cycle of Maywood, Universal Statuary, The Stiffel Lamp Company, and Skyline Design. Pat’s work has been on display throughout the country. For example, he cast all the coral reefs for Sea World Florida and his aluminum cast plaques are on display at Northwestern University. His portfolio is enormous. It’s so large that it even includes a nine-foot-tall, 700-pound bulldog.
More on that later.
Pat currently works for the Benedictine nuns. He is a sculptor/artisan and handyman, who does it all — from original pieces to restoring marble fingers, to refinishing the wood altar Pope John Paul used to hold mass in Grant Park in 1978. His wife of 37 years, Gloria Gonzales Rankin, is a bank teller in LaGrange Park. They raised two children, Angie (35) and Pat Jr. (34). Pat claims he and Gloria conceived their son on the night of our 10-year reunion.
RBHS – Ooh – Aah! We’re the Best!
In 1977, we R-Bites came back from summer adventures to take our place atop the social hierarchy of RBHS as seniors. The moment we walked through the doors, we discovered our hallways had transformed from Depression-era gloom to the eye-popping Peter Max period. Giant, black room numbers surrounded by red swirls filled the walls between classrooms. Our school had become a happier, brighter penitentiary.
Most of us knew that Pat, “the artist,” was the kid who had painted the walls. When interviewing him, he told me the money he earned from his summer job was for tuition at The Art Institute. I found that both admirable and fitting for an artist of his stature. Of course, I believed him and it was indeed a true statement. Some 40 years later, however, I learned there was a lot more to the story.
PAT: “My path to the arts started in those hallways as my probation.”
ME: “Wait, what? Did you say probation?”
PAT: “I did.”
Pat grew up in Englewood, a neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. “My dad left our family when I was seven, and after that, my mom had regular boyfriends,” he said. Not all of them were nice. His family remained at 67th and Damen for four years into white flight. Pat witnessed one neighbor after another move to the suburbs. By 1974, they were one of three white families in what became an increasingly dangerous neighborhood. (Pat contends that the only people who ever hurt him were white).
He and his three brothers were Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students at Kinzie Elementary School. Pat described himself as an ‘E’ student with severe behavioral problems. He had one teacher, however, who he described as “the lady who pulled my mom off me for a whole year” during sixth grade. Her class was the only one in which he behaved.
According to Pat, Florence O’Brien was a chain-smoking Irish drill sergeant, a WAC in WWII. “Before she let me in her class,” he said, “she made my mom come to Kinzie and I had to wait alone in the hall. Then she said (so all of K-through-8 could hear), ‘Lady, I know you and your kids drive halfway across the city to get here every day. You do not live in this area.’ When she let me back in the classroom, she looked at me with so much love, that I shook. She put her hand under my chin and said, ‘You’re not going to misbehave for me are you, Pat?’ And I said, ‘No Ma’am.’ Then she looked all drill sergeant at my mom and said, ‘If I see one THING on this kid—and Lady, you know what I mean—all of you are out of here and DCFS will be at your door.’
“No one touched me after that and it was the happiest year of my life.”
Hooray for Hollywood
While still in junior high, Pat’s art teachers recognized his talents and made a special arrangement for him with Kennedy High School, a sister school to Kinzie. It was an advanced apprenticeship under the guidance of the art professors. Meanwhile, his mother had remarried, and in July of 1974, his step-father, Don Peterson, moved the family from Englewood to Hollywood, a neighborhood in Brookfield. RBHS was practically his next-door neighbor.
Pat says he was nervous about the fresh start. And it was for a good reason. Unfortunately, the Kennedy credits didn’t transfer to RB.
“I was forced to retake all of my classes from the year before,” he said. “My counselor, Ms. Hall, said I was simply not considered of the same educational background as our suburban students. She basically flunked me into RB.”
This was devastating. Pat believed all his academic scholarship hopes were gone. “I was too smart for my own good and sunk low and hard,” he said. Nevertheless, he dove in with all of his brilliance and bravado and entered RB as a freshman who believed he had “nothing to lose.” He quickly found friends with a similar sense of juvenile adventure. According to Pat, too much freedom and no direction led him to mischief that turned felonious.
After winning a state award for sculpture for a plaster figure he made, he was “sucking up” to a couple would-be friends in Dick Kotlar’s sculpture class. While waiting for Kotlar to return with the award, the three miscreants took a butane torch to a prized possession of Kotlar’s on display. They destroyed a 100-piece copper sheet Cutty Sark Ship donated by a former student.
“With a lit torch in my hands and 20 sails on the floor, I turned around to see Kotlar walk through the door. If looks could kick the shit out of me…” he said with regret. “Kotlar was heartbroken. He gave me my award, congratulated me, and then expelled me from the art department forever.”
Another friend from the neighborhood had discovered an after-hours access portal to the school, which Pat found irresistible. It involved climbing to an open boiler room window and a 20-25-foot drop to the floor. “I used to walk around the halls avoiding the floor buffers,” he said. “The teacher’s lounge had a baby TV and a fridge with food. It was my high school safe room.”
And thus, his love affair with the halls of his high school had begun.
Then came sophomore year. “That’s when I went on a drug-fueled-divorced-family-kid-hurt-lark spree. With three accomplices, we stole a Driver’s Ed car from in back of RB. I planned to drive it to St. Barbara’s [Catholic church] where my girlfriend, Pam Florek, was waiting for me.”
The short story is, the car had a broken tire, and none of them really knew how to drive. Pat realized the gig was up and confessed to the lark, landing all four of them in big heck. Unlike Pat, his accomplices had no priors and, most likely advised by a parent based on the lie they told, wrote letters to Superintendent Dr. James Trost claiming “Pat Rankin was trying to establish a car theft ring and bullied them into stealing that driver’s ed car.”
In receipt of the letters, Trost summoned the delinquents to his office. Imagine the line-up: Three thick-headed football players, the accomplices, and the alleged boss, who was built more like the spritely water-boy. “Rankin,” said Dr. Trost, “which one of these guys can you beat up?”
Trost didn’t believe the bullied-into-it defense for one second. He tore up their accusation letters on the spot. “That’s when Trost adopted me,” said Pat. “From that point forward and for the duration of high school, I was accountable to him from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., six days a week.
“I went to court on the matter in 1975, and as the judge had told me twice before, three strikes (felonies) and you’re out! I was looking at three years at St. Charles [County Corrections] and I didn’t care. Neither did my mother. But before he gaveled—and I never lie—the DA spoke up. ‘Your honor,’ he said, ‘before you decide [Pat’s fate] I ask that you read this letter.’ They were bringing the cuffs my way when the judge put on his glasses and read the letter.
“I had been before this judge three times,” said Pat. “After reading that letter, it was the first time he ever looked me in the face.”
When recounting this story, Pat paused a moment to reflect. Then he softened his voice.
“The judge asked me if I knew a Dr. James Trost,” he said. “I said ‘yes,’ and that I’d been having private interviewing sessions with him for weeks before coming to court.”
With the letter in his hand, the judge focused his gaze on the young man in front of him for the third time and said, “Apparently you have a friend who wishes to remain anonymous. SHE is a pillar of society who knew you as a boy, and she asks me to allow Dr. Trost to mentor you as you have a God-given gift that has nearly been beaten out of you.”
“I shrugged,” said Pat. “I did’t care if I died on the spot.” But he agreed to the terms and was released on probation to be supervised by Superintendent Dr. James Trost. From that point, Pat focused his talents on the upkeep of and improvements to his safe place, the halls of Riverside-Brookfield High School.
“I didn’t know who the so-called ‘pillar of society’ was who saved me,” he said. “As for Dr. Trost, he outright said it was either time with him or St. Charles. I recognized what Trost did for me and I loved him.” (Trost passed away in 2016).
Once Pat demonstrated his commitment to Trost’s satisfaction, his playground became his business office. He claims he knew every inch of the building, from the roofs to the basement boiler rooms. “No one will ever have the relationship that I have had with this Mother of a building.”
To this day, Pat believes it was the school itself that saved him.
Giving Back: The Birth of a Bulldog
Both of Pat’s children attended RB. His daughter, Angie, (class of 2006) graduated with nine departmental honors and a full-ride to Northwestern. Patrick Jr. (class of 2007) lives in Ventura, CA, and runs the HR department for a national law firm. The class of 2007 was the last to attend school in the ‘old’ building. Pat Jr. graduated just before the multi-million dollar McHugh construction project would transform RB into a place where most of us aging alumni needed guides to find our way to the old main hall.
Pat’s son played water polo. One day while watching “Junior” at the pool, Pat thought about the reconstruction project. Once it started, sadly, his beloved building would never be the same. “After my son graduated, I realized I would never have a reason to enter RB again,” he said.
This is when the bulldog inside him stirred, and it gave him the idea for a sculpture.
“I wanted to leave a baby at RB forever,” he said.
It began with a small bronze statue, which took a month to sculpt and copy. Pat presented it to the Vice Principal at the time, Tim Scanlon, and Principal/Superintendent Jack Baldermann with a proposal to create a bigger version for the stadium.
“The first proposed statue was a realistic, life-sized Bulldog in Bronze for $10K,” he said. “That’s what it would have cost back in 2007. They loved the idea and planned to sign a contract on the following Monday.” Meanwhile, at 11 p.m. on Sunday night, a surprise emergency board meeting took place, reportedly to discuss firing Baldermann. According to Pat, Baldermann was forced to resign immediately due to an infidelity that had been public knowledge for months. Scanlon took over as principal and Kevin Skinkis became the superintendent. Through the chaos of the reconstruction, which reportedly racked up millions in overruns atop the $3 million budget (I have not verified this), there was no further discussion about the commission. Pat assumed the project was dead.
“Many years went by and I didn’t think about the bronze prototype or even know who had it,” he said. “Then one day, I read in the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark that there was some shakeup in the top administrative positions at RB. Recalling the statuette, I sent an email to the school to ask about it—just to get it back—and suddenly the project took on new life. I received an immediate phone call and they asked for a meeting.”
Pat met with Principal Dr. Hector Freytas, Assistant Principal Dave Mannon, an art teacher, and the music director. Dr. Hector told him the class of 1960 had donated money in 2017 to have a mascot made in honor of a dead classmate. They expected the project to be completed by their 60th reunion in 2020. Hector claimed they looked for a sculptor for three years without success. The problem with that? It was June 2022 and the Class of 1960 had understandably dropped out. Nevertheless, Hector and Company still wanted a statue.
“I gave them three options,” said Pat. “No prices on my part–only process costs. Bronze alone is $80K for a seven-foot piece like this, and you need a crane to move it. So that was out. Fiberglass? Same price and you still need equipment and a facility in which to lay resin. Also out. [The statue] needed to be strong and potentially last forever. Fortunately, I know many techniques.”
Pat’s extensive experience came in handy when the funds Hector said were available dropped from $28K to only $3K. Hector instructed Pat to work within those parameters.
“I wanted to get my lil dog in the door, so I was completely compliant,” he said. “They promised me eight students—three boys and five girls. On the first day of construction, one girl showed up, and an hour later, a second. That was it. We worked in the wood shop next to the pig sty theater all summer. These two kicked ass and glued, rough-shaped the head, and worked on the limbs.
“With nowhere to assemble him, I took his head and torso home in August 2022, where I put an additional 100 hours into the work,” he said. Pat used this time to finish the head and get the torso midway complete. It was time to bring him to RB to attach the limbs and install him in time for the start of the 2022-23 school year.
Then, according to Pat, no one from the school would talk to him about completing the project. Twenty calls went unanswered. Meanwhile, one of his student assistants came to his house expecting to be paid for her work. Pat explained that he had not received payment and his understanding was that the students’ work was voluntary. “She was polite and left,” he said.
Finally, after a month of unanswered calls, Pat got ahold of the guy who had purchased the materials for the project. And he received a cryptic response. “This guy said he could not tell me why no one was talking to me, and that if he did, he’d be fired.” Pat pressed him and the man said, “They’re afraid to talk to you.”
He soon found out why. On the first day of school, someone had “compacted” the limbs. “They were compacted—not dumpstered—and immediately crushed,” he said. Pat’s understanding is that someone in the theater department, whom he had never met, ordered the limbs to be destroyed on the first hour of the first day of school.
WTF?
He never got to the bottom of it. Pat’s spirits were as crushed as his bulldog’s limbs. “But only on the first day,” he said. “I wanted to make another dog, but told them somebody was going to start paying me.”
When Hector agreed to pay him $2K for the work, he started again. Pat put in six months, essentially giving up his paying work, and he “trashed his house” in the process. The biggest bulldog with a heart of gold, a child of Riverside-Brookfield High School, sculpted the shit out of that bloody bulldog and managed to have it installed in the grand entrance of RBHS just before the class of 2023 received their diplomas.
All of this without receiving a dime.
The Good News
Ultimately, through strained and complicated negotiations, Pat received $6K for his efforts and materials two months after installation. Today the statue stands proud in the bright “new” foyer of the reconstructed building.
“He weighs about 700 pounds,” said Pat. “If you follow the center line from the floor up, my support system is inside the marker beneath his body. He stands on books, which are crushed with heavy feet that barely touch them. The weight of his hunger smashes knowledge with aggression. His feet never touch the base or the ground. Time flies. And if we are chasing all of our dreams, so do we.”
The floorboards were inspired by Pat’s visit to the Little Red schoolhouse where he observed the traditional flooring used in Chicago-area schools. Behind the bulldog is an odd-shaped book—a diary—which is absorbed into the boards.
“He is in the exact pose as the logo,” said Pat. “His gaze is upward because he is a bulldog, a little guy. He will always look up to his challenges like they are bullies. Lead with your chin for the truth and it will hit you first every time. His back is arched like a weightlifter bringing up half a ton, and I changed his fist to be open. I made it to hold the jerseys (etc.) of opponents.
“I can and have climbed him like a tree and sat on his head. No one else ever will,” he said. “My right thumbprint is behind his right ear. Where he can hear me when I need him.”
An Angel Revealed
There was a lot of confusion and angst involved with Pat’s compensation for this epic structure and we talked about all of it. I couldn’t help but relapse into cheerleader mode and encourage him to assert his value. Pat is a professional artist, a fine artist. As commanded by those who recognized his “god-given gifts,” he has earned an honest and productive living and raised a beautiful, loving family. He’s been a good boy.
I believe Pat is grateful to have been paid anything at all for what was truly a labor of love. My hope, and the reason I wrote this piece, is that every R-Bite from the Class of 1960 to the Class of 1978 to the Class of 2007 to the Class of 2023 and beyond will take a moment to appreciate the artistry and lifetime of dedication that Pat Rankin has shared with the hallways of Riverside-Brookfield High School.
Our 45th class (’78) reunion is this weekend, and I plan to give the Biggest Bulldog a great big hug. If you happen upon our alma mater at any point in the near future, please strike a pose with Pat Rankin’s bulldog and share the photos.
By the way, remember the so-called pillar of society who urged the judge to release Pat to the probationary eye of Dr. James Trost? Among the boatload of stories he has shared with me since our conversation began, this one may be the most endearing:
One day about 20 years ago, Pat happened upon the obituary of his sixth-grade teacher in his community newspaper, the Riverside-Brookfield Landmark. “There she was,” he said. “ Florence O’Brien. The chain-smoking Irish-drill-sergeant-WAC who saved me from my mother’s abuse.” Her obituary included her service on the Board of Education at Riverside Brookfield High School from 1974-1982.
Pat, at last, had found his pillar. And he has paid it forward with kindness, humor, generosity of spirit, and beautiful art ever since. ###
For more about Patrick Dee Rankin visit: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/patrick-rankin