Biography

July 31, 1956 · Chicago, Illinois, USA

Deval Laurdine Patrick

First African-American governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (USA). He was in office from January 4, 2007 to January 8, 2015.

He was the 2009 Commencement Speaker at Wheaton College in Massachusetts.

2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

Son of Emily Mae (Wintersmith) and Pat Patrick (Laurdine Kenneth Patrick, Jr.), a jazz musician and composer. His father was a member of Sun Ra band.

Part of his 2009 commencement speech: Our youngest daughter Catherine graduated from high school a couple years ago. Sitting at her graduation, I couldn't help but think about the difference between her journey and my own nearly 35 years earlier. I grew up on welfare on the South Side of Chicago in my grandparents' two bedroom tenement. I shared a room and set of bunk beds with my mother and my sister who is here today -- so we would rotate from the top bunk to the bottom bunk to the floor, every third night on the floor. I went to overcrowded, sometimes violent public schools. I can't think of a time when I didn't love to read. But I don't actually remember ever owning a book until I got my break in 1970 when I came to Massachusetts on a scholarship to a boarding school..Now, our Catherine, by contrast has always had her own room, most of that time in a house in a leafy neighborhood outside of Boston. By the time she got to high school, she had traveled on four continents, she knew how to use and pronounce concierge, and she had shaken hands in the White House with the President of the United States.