URBANA — It’s amazing the Great Hall still has a roof with the way the choir sang at the celebration of life service for William Maurice Patterson held Sunday at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.
Their voices soared to the seams of the ceiling and back again; with every “this, this, this, this” — count them, there were at least 20 in a row — they sang their hearts out and took the audience with them.
Will Patterson wouldn’t have it any other way. His life was about music.
Friends and family packed the campus auditorium, overflowing to the balcony. They were dressed to the nines. Women wore black suits, dresses and pearls. Some had big pink corsages. Others wore sunglasses.
A little girl in a blue overcoat held her blankie in one hand and her grandmother’s hand in the other as she led her down the aisle stairs to try to find a seat.
Men wore suits and hats. Their matching hankies were crumpled by the end of the service.
Krannert’s Great Hall swelled to its seams with love. There was never a quiet moment. Even when one of the speakers had to pause to gather themselves, the crowd let them know they were not alone.
“Take your time!” a voice shouted. “It’s all right.”
This was a celebration that topped the best concert you have ever been to. The sound was exactly what Will Patterson would have wanted.
DJ Silkee sat on stage behind a table wrapped in red, as serious and still as a heart surgeon — reaching in, synchronizing hundreds of pulses through her curated beats.
The event was centered around music. Because that’s who Will Patterson was throughout his 58 years. Joe Stovall, the event's emcee, even said so in his opening. Stovall struggled for a week to find the right words to welcome the audience. The night before, he had all but given up, going to bed at 2 a.m.
“And guess who came to me last night in my sleep …” he said.
The audience responded with a deep sigh.
“And when I woke up this morning, there was only one word to describe the life of Dr. Patterson: music.”
Stovall invited the audience to participate in the ceremony remembering the late UI School of Music professor — though they would have anyway.
“From Romine to Romania, from Ellis pride to Ellis Island, from University Avenue to the University of Illinois, from the Boys Club to the Country Club, that’s Dr. P. He lived a life that most people dream about. And so today, we’re going to celebrate. I know it's a somber occasion when you lose a loved one, but knowing Will and knowing what he wants from us — he wants us to celebrate ..."
“We want you to participate because he lived a participatory life. Will was always there for everybody — so this is our opportunity to be there for him and his family.”
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The celebration unfolded more like a conversation between whoever was on stage and the audience. It wasn’t a place for holding back tears. It was an outpouring of love.
Lori Gold Patterson kept her sunglasses on at first. So did her daughter, Maya. Will’s only grandson, “Big Button” West, dressed in a dashing suit and vest, sat on Lori’s lap, then Maya’s, then back to Lori’s again. She kissed him on his nose and he nuzzled close to her.
Two young men dressed in top hats and tuxedos entered from opposite side aisles, one holding a crown. They danced in ceremony toward center stage as the Champaign-Urbana Community Gospel Choir sang “I Shall Wear a Crown.”
Lori stood and held her hand to the heavens. Everyone else remained seated for a time.
The young men placed the crown on a box draped in blue, in front of Dr. P’s most cherished Hip Hop Express jacket, embroidered with his motto: “Building community one record at a time.”
At the end of the four-minute song, the sound of the standing ovation drowned out the voices of the choir — but not for long. The soloist’s voice soared, uplifted by the choir, who seemed to sing from a place reserved for just these moments.
“When you do a job well done on earth, you get honored like this,” Stovall said. “Dr. P gets his crown.”
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“Like all of you, I am in pain and deeply sad about the sudden loss of Dr. William Maurice Patterson,” said Henry O. Meares, former principal of Urbana Middle School, where he first met Will in the fall of 1981.
“He was my friend, a longtime mentee and a reminder that the most powerful formula for achieving success with marginalized youth was relationships, relationships, relationships.”
“I know of no one more committed to serving marginalized youth than Maurice. If you knew Maurice, you also knew you could not be in his presence for at least 30 minutes and leave without knowing the power of music and the impact hip-hop has on the marginalized youth,” he said.
“He was convinced that music was a powerful code-breaker to engage the minds and the talents of marginalized youth. It is certainly no surprise to me that Maurice coined the phrase 'ghetto genius.' Maurice Patterson was an exemplary genius. A role model, a gifted artist who at an early age wrote his own script.”
Other speakers included the Rev. Freddie Patterson; Kevin Hamilton, dean of the UI College of Fine and Applied Arts; state Rep. Carol Ammons; UI Professor Malaika McKee-Culpepper; Aaron Ammons, host of the S.P.E.A.K Cafe and Champaign County's clerk and recorder; UI junior Matthew Clayton; and Amiyah Summerville, a youth from the Don Moyer Boys & Girls Club.
But it was Mr. Patterson’s oldest son, William Jordan Patterson — i.e. “Ghetto Genius 2.0” according to Stovall — who gave the audience the best glimpse of William Maurice Patterson’s everyday life.
Set to his dad’s favorite Al Green song, “Look What You Done,” Patterson 2.0 prepared a video that captured these little moments — his 9,000 “organized” records, dances with his grandbaby, trying to cook with Worcestershire sauce in the kitchen, giving flowers to the love of his life, catnaps in public places and the full rainbow they saw on April 3 — the day after he died.
“Before anything, I’m a William before I’m a Jordan. So ya’ll honor that as William Patterson. I am William Patterson before anything,” he said, the audience bursting into applause and shouts of support.
“Everybody in here, every face that I see, every heart that’s beating in here, every brain that’s working in here, that’s memories with my father. So I don’t have to worry about his legacy living on, because I can see it in ya’ll — as much as I believe I can see it in myself.”
