I was in the emergency room at Banner UMC about a year ago, attending a family member, when I saw Sandra Patton in the hallway.
“Norm’s here,” she said. “But I think he’ll be OK.”
I didn’t know it then, but Norm Patton, Sandra’s husband, one of the most successful basketball coaches in Arizona history, the patriarch of a basketball/softball family that rivals any sports family in Tucson history, was dying.
“He’s too tough not to be OK,” I told his wife. “Too ornery and too tough.”
Norm died last week. He was only 77. I don’t know the exact number of basketball games he won at Marana High School, Pima College and Central Arizona College — 500 or 600 for sure — but he wasn’t a numbers guy.
He was a do-the-right-thing guy. His daughters, including state championship softball coach Kelly Fowler, and his grandchildren, including Arizona prep softball players of the year Kenzie and Mattie Fowler, are of similar character
Norm grew up in remote Cliff, New Mexico, the son of a rancher, discovering long ago that life isn’t about winning basketball games. Norm was driving the family’s pickup, racing like mad to get to a hospital in nearby Silver City, when his father, Barney, died of a heart attack while sitting next to him.
The favorite story he told me was about the night in 1985 when his daughter, Patty Patton Shearer, led Marana to the state basketball championship – just as he had coached Marana to boys state titles in 1968, 1969 and 1972.
Norm couldn’t go to Patty’s game at Phoenix Xavier High School because he was coaching Central Arizona College to the ACCAC championship that night at Mesa College.
After CAC won, Norm ran from the locker room, hoping he might get to Xavier to see the final minutes of Patty’s game. When he got into the gymnasium, he saw Sandra.
“How are they doing?” he shouted.
She gave him a thumbs up.
That’s a fitting description of Norm Patton’s impact in Tucson. Thumbs up.
