Gary B. "Squeaky" Patterson

Gary Brian "Squeaky" Patterson, 73, of Charlestown, Rhode Island, passed away on November 17, 2025, in Newport. Born in Bridgeton, RI, he was the son of Warren and Emma Angell Patterson. He leaves brother, Warren Patterson Jr., nephews Norman and Brian Patterson and dear companion Jan Creamer Very.
Growing up on "Patterson Cove" at Wilsons Pond, Gary became an excellent swimmer. At age 10, he saved the life of a drowning friend at the Wallum Lake swimming pool. Gary's got his familiar nickname, "Squeaky," in third grade from an eighth grader at recess. It was not meant derisively. Though a slight figure, Gary had such a quick wit and friendly manner that older boys always looked out for his welfare. An "A+" student, he excelled at drawing and practiced it for the rest of his life. His 1980 "Historical Map of Burrillville," a light hearted spoof of a like-named production by artist and mentor Bill Turner, was perhaps his most popular production.Best known as a musician, Gary's thunder-clap inspiration was The Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. He always cited Jerry Leveille, his guitar teacher, and Ed Bonczek, his classroom teacher and bass player in Leveille's band, as his greatest early influences.
A graduate of the Boston School of Electronic Music, Gary performed both conventional Rock and experimental mixed-media sound, recording hundreds of hours of experimental sound in collaboration with a concert cellist. He was also adept as an entertainer. Unforgettable, for example, was Gary's 1975 performance of "The World's First Telepathic Music Concert" at the Bowdoin College Coffee House, purporting to play a synthesizer with his brain waves. With bassist Shorty Hanley, he explored musical satire and recorded such gems as "Off the Pills and Back on the Bottle," and "God is an American."
A stroke in 2009 ended Gary's music career, but he continued writing...a pursuit begun at the Writer's Circle of the First Universalist Church of Providence, and continued with his founding of The Writer's Group at the Jesse Smith Library in Harrisville. He illustrated and self-published over a dozen autobiographic pieces, some collected at the Jesse Smith Library.
Spiritually, Gary was a pilgrim, beginning at the Community Baptist Church Sunday School. As an adult, he immersed himself in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. He was a congregant of the First Universalist Church of Providence, and a close friend of it's pastor, Thomas Ahlburn. Of late, Gary had been an acolyte of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh. Of Gary's spirit an old friend has written: "When a person has that powerful a heart and you love them fully, you don't have to separate. They become bigger than just that one physical person you knew. They become every passionate guitar riff, every moment of appreciating a great painting or of just sitting in nature quietly. Or a great laugh! They are in it with you still. Squeaky had such a big heart and powerful spirit that it just got to a point that a body couldn't contain him. He needed more room. A true artist and renaissance man cannot be contained to one form. He was a man who taught people how to love without prejudice, even when they didn't know he was doing it." Funeral arrangements for Squeaky are private at the request of his family and are entrusted to the Boucher Funeral Home, 272 Sayles Ave., Pascoag.
www.boucherfh.com