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- Sponsors of baptism Patrick Quinn and Catherine Flanagan
Known as Patricia. Liked to be called "Mame" in her later years after "Auntie Mame."
Mary Ellen Patricia Flynn - declaration of intent dated May 16, 1932 #110286; petition as Mary Ellen Patricia Tate dated July 12, 1939 #124988 (Detroit, Wayne County, Michigan)
Enumerated on the 1940 Census living with her sister Margaret.
12510 Corbett Ave. Detroit Wayne Michigan
owned home value 5500
Margaret Pellerin (informant), head of household, 38,born in Canada-French (sic), widow, 2 yrs of high school, submitted petition for naturalization, lived in same place in 1935
Patricia (---) daughter age 13 sixth grade born in Michigan, in school
Paul (---) son, age 9, third grade, born in Michigan, in school
LeRoy (---) son, age 3, Michigan
Mary Tate, sister, age 29, born in Canada-French (sic), naturalized, married, same place in 1935, occupation stenographer for broker, worked 20 weeks/year earned $1560
John Tate (AB) brother in law age 32 2 yrs of college (sic) born in England naturalized, same place in 1935, unemployed all year in 1940, occupation newspaper reporter
Armand Pellerin, brother in law age 27, machine operator at automobile factory earned $1320
Michael Parkis nephew age 4
"An Executive Secretary Meets Many Challenges" NY Times July 20, 1963 by Marylin Bender [with photograph]
Take a few delicacies like Cornish hen for lunch and fresh fruit out of season at tea time. Add an annual salary in five figures. Subtract a 12-hour working day and a temperamental employer and you have some idea of what it means to be an executive secretary. The chief virtues of the job are economic independence, a measure of prestige, and the challenge of working with the kind of people who have what it takes to go straight to the top. So it seems to Patricia Flynn, a blond, grey -eyed woman who has had enough experience as an executive secretary to fill several books. The first, entitled "So You Want to Be An Executive Secretary," has just rolled of Macfadden's presses in paperback form. She is under contract to another publisher to do a secretary's manual. Among the prominent persons for whom Miss Flynn has acted as an executive secretary are R.J. Thomas, former president of the United Automobile Workers; Ogden R. Reid, former president, publisher and editor of the New York Herald Tribune; Irene Selznick, a broadway producer, and Robert E. Kintner, president of the National Broadcasting Company. She resigned her job with Mr. Kintner last January to finish her first book. Miss Flynn was a Detroit newspaper reporter when she gave up journalism to take her first executive secretary's job with the automobile union. "I did it to make more money," she admitted. Later she perfected her stenographic skill enough to become a court reporter, earning as much as $200 a week when family finances "got a little low." "As a good executive secretary, you have tremendous economic independence," Miss Flynn declared. "You can get a job anywhere." In 1953, she went to Spain, not knowing a word of Spanish, and got a secretarial job with an American concern in Madrid that paid her $135 a week. In the United States, an executive secretary can draw as much as $15,000 a year, she said. An executive secretary, by her definition, "is really an administrative assistant." In one of her jobs, she had two secretaries of her own and rarely typed a letter for her boss. Among the duties she has performed for her employers are: "opening mail and answering it or composing replies for their signature, deciding who got to see them or talk to them on the telephone, handling a boss's stocks, bonds and income tax returns (with his lawyer and accountant), his personal finances ("One of them never saw his salary check', she recalled. 'I decided what went into his savings and what went into the checking account.") and paying his household bills. She decorated the office and private dining room for one employer who has a personal butler and cook on the company payroll. IT was in this 12-hour-a-day job that Miss Flynn enjoyed Cornish hen and fruit out of season but "I needed it to keep up my energy." "The people you work for are a tremendous challenge to your flexibility," she said, smiling broadly. "The top people get there because of drive and it's quite a thing to live with." The executive secretary basks in the prestige reflected from her boss and the way she deals with people inside and outside the organization may be crucial to the performance of his role. Despite the scope and importance of the executive secretary's tasks, Miss Flynn insisted, excellent secretarial skills are essential in the beginning. Less than perfect typing or a single spelling error can negate completely the purpose of an important letter, she said. Women who aspire to be executive secretaries are also advised by Miss Flynn to look for jobs in areas where they have particular interests and to learn everything they can about their fields and their companies. Such knowledge can be a springboard to something else besides secretarial work, she added. She counsels married women to "bury their kids" when it comes to resumes. "Employers are prejudiced against working mothers," she said. "It's terribly unfair. I never lost a day's work because of being a mother." She is married to Harvey Peate, a graphic arts consultant. Her daughter by a previous marriage, Patricia Tate, [age withheld], a Bennington sophomore, is attending secretarial school this summer.
There was also a writeup on her as a local-girl-makes-good in the Napanee Beaver, of unknown date, consisting mainly of heavily 'embroidered' information; it states (among other less plausible things) that she attended East Hungerford and Clareview public schools and moved to Detroit in her teens.
"Patricia F. Peate, 72, Dead; Director of Theatre Off Park" NY Times, October 31, 1983
Patricia Flynn Peate, executive director and producer for the Theater Off Park, died last Tuesday in an apartment her family had in Manhattan. She was 72 years old and lived in Sherman, Conn. Mrs. Peate was executive secretary and assistant to Ogden Reid, then publisher and owner of The New York Herald Tribune; executive assistant to the late Robert E. Kintner, president of the National Broadcasting Company; assistant to Irene Selznick, the Broadway producer, and coordinator of the Eugene O'Neill Theater Foundation's Playwrights' Conference. She also wrote "So You Want to Be an Executive Secretary." At the Theater Off Park, which is associated with the Community Church, she was responsible for 26 new productions, mainly new works by North American and Irish playwrights and a revival of "Shuffle Along," which went to Broadway as "Eubie." Surviving are her husband, Harvey; a daughter, Patricia Tate; a son, Michael Parkis, and four granddaughters.
Patricia Flynn Peate is noted in "Ten Seasons: New York Theatre in the Seventies" by Leiter, published 1986 by Greenwood Press (New York), and "The Work: Conversations with English Canadian Playwrights", p. 308, in connection to her work at "Theater off Park"
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1910 - 1983 (72 years)
