Jim Burton Patterson

Jim Patterson, the youngest son of Harry Lucas and Virginia Cowan Patterson, was born September 16, 1932 in his mother's original homestead shack near Freewater, Montana on the Big Bend of the Milk River. After spending a few years of his boyhood near Leadore, Idaho, he graduated from High School in Malta, Mont. in 1950 and went to work on the logging crew of Collins Pondosa Lumber Co. in the Wallowa Mountains of northeast Oregon.

In the fall of 1952, Jim was drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Korean War. He received Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Roberts, California; Enginee...