MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
Bob D’Atri was my don. At least I called him my don whenever I saw him, and he didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he kind of got a kick out of it and even began to call me “Ah, Michael” in a raspy voice.
One time he jokingly (I think) put his hand out to me so I could kiss his ring. And since I had been sitting in Patrick’s Pub for more than a few minutes, I did, which seemed to startle him based on how quickly he snapped his hand back away from me. But he got a pretty good laugh out of it. For Bob, anyway.
In many respects, Bob was the don for a lot of people, whether they knew it or not, because he helped so many folks with difficult times and circumstances. He reached out on his own and he did so on the quiet, just as he did everything, for the way Bob looked at the matter was it was nobody else’s damn business.
Unless, of course, you were working for Bob and, let’s just say, weren’t giving it your best effort. Then things got to be not so quiet.
Oh, he was demanding. He was sometimes hard and he expected much – oftentimes too much, perhaps. But it was nothing more than he expected of himself or had done himself, so he knew firsthand it could be done. And believe it, he worked the kitchen line in Patrick’s into his 80s.
Work to Bob D’Atri was breathing to most everyone else. He didn’t love work, he needed it, and he worked from the time he was old enough to walk. Whatever it took, whatever was needed, Bob got ‘er done, and more, because nothing was going to be handed to him and he wasn’t going to ask for it to be.
He truly was a man in the tradition of George Bernard Shaw who would dream things that never were and say, “Why not?”
In the late 1960s, Bob had had enough of working for the man, so he made himself the man, creating and building the D’Atri dynasty with ambition and elbow grease. The business didn’t even start on the ground, according to Bob. It started in the back of his car as he would take the newly available D’Atri subs to work with him at the Kelly Springfield and set up shop from his car.
In 1970, he and his wife Rosemary opened D’Atri Subs on Columbia Street. Then it was D’Atri Restaurant and D’Atri Bakery in LaVale, followed by Fratelli Market and Deli, which later became Fratelli Restaurant (which I love very much but still miss the deli) and then it was Patrick’s Pub, which opened just in a nick of time for so many of us who had been displaced by the closing of When Pigs Fly.
Patrick’s, named for Bob and Rosemary’s late son Pat, is where I got to know Bob and, really, better know his family, many of whom I had gone to school with or had covered when they played sports, and it has truly been one of the great blessings of my life.
Bob believed in keeping the place spotless, generous portions and great service. And he liked his places to be cool and dark. The cool part (some of us would say cold) involved Bob’s study of “BTUs” (body temperature units he called it). The dark part came from his feeling that a restaurant or pub should be dimly lit. Or, as he said to me one day while he was turning down the lights, “I’m trying to get you (a date).”
Every afternoon, like clockwork, when Bob walked in the back door at Pat’s he would go behind the bar and directly to the thermostat and the light switches to adjust each one accordingly, one afternoon prompting the bartender, Kaitlin, to say, “Why do we even have (flipping) lights?”
As my drink came through my nose, Bob looked at her and said, “Do you want lights? Do you want lights?” and promptly turned every light in the place all the way up, and said, “There. You’ve got lights,” before storming back to the office.
Kaitlin merely looked at me and shrugged and Bob soon came back and made what he deemed to be the necessary adjustments.
You always knew where you stood with Bob. He was as direct and as truthful as they come. Sometimes, brutally truthful.
I just loved the guy and have missed our afternoons in the dim corner of Patrick’s Pub. When you’re around a man like Bob D’Atri, who lived the life that he lived, you just sit and listen. I saw gruff Bob and grumbly Bob. I saw seemingly angry Bob, but most of all, I saw funny Bob (what a sense of humor), and I saw a man who was easy to laugh at himself whenever he was called out on something, usually by his son Sean or his grandson Seth.
I also saw kind Bob. Like Charlie Lattimer, Bob had a soft spot in his heart for elderly folks and he always went out of his way to be as gentle and as helpful as he could be for them. I also saw generous Bob, even though he did his best to make sure that nobody saw him.
More than any Bob, I saw Bob whose heart melted at the sight of his grandchildren, and I saw patriarch Bob, who loved and provided for his family every moment of his life.
Bob D’Atri did not set out to make a difference in this world, but then he made an enormous difference in this world.
Whether he liked it or not.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT