Patrick Quinn Obituary

Quinn, Patrick

Patrick Michael Quinn died on Friday, January 3rd in his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. He was 82 years old, and is survived by his wife, Mary Janzen Quinn, his daughters Abra and Rachel Quinn, his son-in-law Tim Marshall, his granddaughters Ruby Quinn Marshall and Rosie Frances Marshall, all of Oakland, California, and two cousins, Will Malsch, of Lake Geneva, and Betty Emery, of Monona, Wisconsin.

While Patrick Quinn grew up in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and lived in Madison, Wisconsin in his twenties, he spent most of his working life in the Chicago area, where he was a historian, an archivist, a sports fan, a father, and an activist involved in many causes, from the Civil Rights movement, through the Vietnam anti-war movement, to the Central American Solidarity movement, the Anti Apartheid movement, the movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the movement against the war on Gaza and Palestine.

One facet of his deep knowledge of history was his involvement in genealogy - his own, yes, but also in how the surge of interest in family history that resulted from Alex Haley's Roots led to a new appreciation of social history - not the history of elites or Great Men or dry political processes, but the collective history of ordinary working Americans as seen in their demographics and their genealogy. He published an article on this growing movement in a 1991 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He also researched his own family, which before the days of Ancestry.com involved traveling to local records repositories, city halls, cemeteries, and archives and reading the manuscript census on microfilm. He uncovered the documented records of his own family's stories of their Chicago past: his maternal grandfather had been born in Yorkshire, England, had emigrated in the 1880s to Canada with his parents and younger sister, and left on a wheat farm there when the family broke up with the apparent death of his mother and disappearance of his father. This grandfather told Patrick that he got tired of the wheat harvest in his late teens and jumped a freight train which ended up in Chicago. He got a job in the railyard, and eventually met and married Patrick's grandmother, whose family had farmed and run a tavern in Southern Illinois on a tract near the Lincolns' land, but who moved to Chicago in the 1880s also. The couple moved up to Lake Geneva in 1912, but retained their Chicago links.

Patrick Quinn served as the University Archivist for Northwestern University from 1974 to 2008, and took the Archives from two filing cabinets of dusty materials to a renowned repository of different collections relating to not only Northwestern's institutional history, but to students and alumni who have used what they learned there to affect the world. He was an ambassador of sorts for the University, speaking across the country for different alumni groups, and he served in both the Society of American Archivists and the Midwest Archives Conference. He also taught archival science at Loyola University and at Dominican University.

When he retired as University Archivist at Northwestern University, he and Mary moved back to Lake Geneva, and he was able to buy his childhood home. They merged back into the life of Lake Geneva, and Patrick became active with the Historic Preservation Commission, organized public programs at the Geneva Lake Museum, and was an active member of the Friends of the Geneva Theater. For Patrick Quinn, history was a living thing which new generations needed to grapple with and understand. He passed that love on to his children and grandchildren.

Visitation will be held at the Derrick Funeral Home, 800 Park Drive, Lake Geneva, on Saturday, January 18th, from noon to 2 PM. The service is at 2 PM.

In lieu of flowers, you can honor Patrick with a donation to the Friends of the Lake Geneva Public Library or to the International Institute for Research and Education - links are provided on the funeral home's website.

To post an online condolence please visit www.derrickfuneralhome.com

Derrick Funeral Home of Lake Geneva is honored to be assisting the Quinn family.

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