Patrick Kenneth Lackey

Patrick K. Lackey died Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024, at the Brightview Catonsville assisted living center in Maryland from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 80.

Pat was born in the western Kansas town of Ransom on July 30, 1943, the son of Harmon and Lee Lackey. He hopscotched through small Kansas towns growing up and attended four colleges – majoring, at various times, in chemistry, music, mathematics, English and journalism. He eventually graduated from Wichita State University.

His college years were broken up by a stint in the Vietnam War, where he was spared some of the worst combat because he knew how to type and his unit needed a company clerk. Before and after the war, he considered a career in music, drumming for jazz combos and for a rock band called Spider and the Crabs.

“I would have spent my life in music,” he once said, “but I was an ounce short of talent.”

Where Pat did excel was in writing, and he had a prolific and successful career as a journalist at newspapers in Kansas, Iowa and Virginia. In Iowa in the 1970s and 1980s, he spent nearly 10 years as a reporter and then the “Letters from Lackey” columnist for the Iowa City Press-Citizen and The Des Moines Register. The column was a blend of humor, politics and policy, laced with personal stories about his family, dogs and running.

He then spent 20 years at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. As a reporter, he covered everything from a blockbuster espionage case to quirky stories about people in small towns throughout the state. At the end of his career, he was an editorial writer, often focusing on what was working – or not working – in municipal government. He was a reliably liberal voice in a generally conservative state.

(The Virginian-Pilot ran an extended appreciation of Pat's journalism; you can find it here: chrisadams.typepad.com/lackey.)

Pat had discovered the joy of running in his 30s and was a competitor into his late 60s, with a personal best in the marathon of 2:27:58.

He met his wife Mary on a dance floor on the seventh day of the seventh month of 1977. On July 25, 1981, they ran the Bix 7 road race in the morning and got married in the afternoon. Pat’s father – by then a Methodist minister – officiated.

Their life for the next four decades was filled with books, family, news, animals and sports. They maintained a roster of pets – at one time, there were six: four dogs, two cats. If he didn’t have a dog leash in his hand, Pat likely had a book – fiction or non-, serious or funny – and you could often find him reading on a mall bench while Mary shopped.

In 2004, they retired and moved to Pikesville, Maryland, where Pat learned to love the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens as much as he did the Boston Celtics.

Pat and Mary spent weekends at local swing dances and grandchildren’s activities – attending concerts, keeping stats at basketball games, coaching baseball. They were also active in the Sudbrook Park neighborhood association.

Reflecting in the last year of his life, Pat had sage advice: Be kind. Relax. Accept being normal or average. As for a motto? “It could be worse.”

He is survived by a daughter from a previous marriage, Michelle Mitchem and her husband Corey Mitchem of Indianapolis, Indiana; stepsons Timothy Adams and his wife Deborah Lewin of Catonsville, Maryland, and Christopher Adams and his wife Caralee Johnson Adams of Bethesda, Maryland. He is also survived by nine grandchildren: Sophia Lewin Adams of Chicago; Maxwell Adams and his wife Courtney Adams of Auburn Hills, Michigan; Nicholas Adams of Portland, Oregon; Spencer Adams of San Rafael, California; Holly Adams of Bethesda, Maryland; Tyler Mitchem of Orlando, Florida; and Asia, Myles and C.J. Mitchem of Indianapolis, Indiana. He also had one great-grandchild: Theodore Ward Adams of Auburn Hills, Michigan.

Also surviving are sisters-in-law Kathleen “Kitty” Metzger and her husband Daryl of Johnston, Iowa, and Christine Lemyre and her husband Mark of Pleasant Hill, California; long-time friends Robert McKenzie, who met Pat on the running circuit in Iowa and was best man at his wedding, and Fred Kirsch, a fellow journalist at The Virginian-Pilot; and his last two pets: Happy the dog and Bix the cat.

He was preceded in death by his wife, Mary Adams-Lackey, in 2021; his parents; and his siblings Mike, Peggy and Tammy. Memorials can be directed to Hungry for Music (hungryformusic.org), which provides instruments to kids in need, or the Maryland SPCA (mdspca.org).

Online condolences can be left at the Cremation Society of Maryland (cremationsocietyofmd.com/obituaries/obituary-listings).

A memorial service will be held at Milford Mill United Methodist Church, 915 Milford Mill Road, Pikesville, Maryland, on Saturday, June 22, at 1 p.m.