My Friend, Pat Duffy Junior
Pat Duffy Junior
My editor and fiancée Robin gave me the suggestion that I should talk about Pat Duffy Junior.
Pat Duffy Junior took care of the games and basically took care of most of the maintenance in the park.
The Rendons – Max and his son Mickey – took care of the concession stands.
And the Cavaliers ran the ballroom, although the Rendons took care of the bar at the ballroom.
When I started working at Idora Park, Pat Duffy Junior interviewed me. He was sitting at his desk with a whole bunch of papers strewn all over it.
He looked at me and asked me how old I was. I told him I was 12 and that I would be 13 on September 7.
He looked up at me and smiled and I could see he was thinking, and apparently he was thinking that I would be 13 in about six or seven weeks so that should be okay.
So I told me I was hired and to get a work permit and then I would start working. I got my work permit on Friday and started Monday. When I called him Friday afternoon, he said to come in the office on Monday so he could put me on one of the games.
When I walked in, he said, “Hi, Chuck! Eager to start working?”
I said yes. He handed me one of the Idora Park gold jackets and introduce me to George Goodman and that's how I started at Idora Park.
To me, he seemed like a very nice man. He had white wavy hair and his face was always kind of pink, like his blood pressure was up. But he always had a kind smile when he talked to me.
A couple times a day, Pat Duffy Junior would go for a walk around the park to make sure everything was running all right. I remember the first day I worked there, he came right out of his office and straight up to the punk rack and said, “How’s it going today, Chuck?”
I said it was going fine.
The person that was working with me had been there for a while, and Pat asked, “How is Chuck doing?”
“He’s really good, no problem at all.”
Pat turned back to me and said, “Keep up the good work.” And then he went on for his walk through the park.
In my opinion Pat Duffy Junior had a bit of an open door policy. If there was something you needed to talk to him about you could go in and ask him if he had time. If he did, he would say yes. And to be honest with you I never heard a no – he always said, “Yes, what do you need?”
That first summer working there went really fast, and every once in a while Pat Duffy Junior would come and talk to me to see how things were going. At the end of the year, he asked me if I was coming back and I said yes.
He said, “That’s good. I’ll see you next year.”
The following year I came into the office about three or four weeks before the park opened.
I said, “Can I still get a job here?”
He said, “Of course.” He said he was glad to see me come back. George Goodman, who was Pat’s games manager was standing in the office. He said he was glad to see me, too. They told me what day I would start and what time to be there.
He told me that I would be working at Skee-Ball with Howie, a guy who was already been working at the park. Even when I worked in Skee-Ball, every once in a while he would come over and talk to me.
I always thought he was a very level-headed and good boss. He seem to know how to work with the young people like me who were working for him. And even when he got upset or just plain mad, he never really flew off the handle at a worker.
I remember the first time that I saw them throw Mr. Bubble in the Lost River. Mr. Duffy came out of his office red-faced, yelling at the guys but he didn't fire them. Now, I’ll admit firing them may have been kind of hard because that was just a yearly thing at the park. The guys who were working on that ride did it every year – it was a tradition. He could have gotten a lot more upset because they would have to shut the ride down the clean it up and get all the soap out of it.
Another example of what a great boss he was – when those robbers who stole the money off of the guys who worked Skee-Ball. After everything was settled, he called me in the office and want to make sure I was okay and that I wasn't too upset over what happened. He said if I needed to, I could take the rest of the day off. He really did care about the people who work for him.
In another story, I wrote about the person who came to work for him that was stealing money. He didn’t just go out and fire him. He wanted to make sure it was him before he did anything. Even when he finally did fire the guy, he brought in the security guy who was watching him, and explained how he knew where and why the money was missing. But once he had proof, once they caught him stealing money from Putt-Putt, he said, “You’re fired. Don't come back to the park again.”
The summer that I was 15 going on 16, I wanted to buy a car. And I had $150 in my savings account which I thought would be a good amount to start out with. Used cars were a little cheaper back then. A lot cheaper.
I was going down Market Street one day with my brother and saw this black 1962 Mercury Meteor with red interior. They wanted $250, which was a good price. But the place was closed. I didn't have a chance to take a good look at it. Besides I would have to have my father look at it before I would buy it.
I went in the office and I talked to Mr. Duffy and asked him if I could have in advance on my pay to get the car. He had said that I had been a good worker. He said, “Let’s write something up and that's fine.”
Well the next day I took my father up to see the car. From the outside it did look beautiful. It was black with bright red interior. But once I open the door, I saw that it would have been a car that Fred Flintstone would have really liked, as in if I ever needed to stop the car, I could just put my feet through the floorboard and use my feet.
So when I went to work that day explain to Pat that I wasn’t buying the car after all, he said, “Well, that's fine.” I told him how much I appreciated that he was willing to do that.
That's what I mean. Pat was such a good boss. He could have said I was a young kid and since I didn’t have my license yet, why did I need a car.
I guess Pat knew that how much young guys love their first car and want one.
Especially when you see Mr. Duff’s car, which was a souped-up Dodge Charger.
And that brings me back to the one blog I already wrote about the workers and their souped-up cars. Next to Pat Duffy the Third's Dodge Charger was a yellow Plymouth GTX. I couldn't find out who owned it, although rumor had it that it was Pat Duffy Junior’s car. It makes you wonder because they were always park next to each other, as if they got there at the same time.
I guess I could probably go on and on about Pat Duffy Junior and all the things that he did, but I would probably have to make a lot of blogs in a row.
But I will end it this way. When the Wildcat and the Lost River caught fire, there were some rumors that it was deliberated started, which wasn't true at all. No one loved Idora Park more than Pat Duffy Junior.
One day I was walking around the park and I saw Pat looking over some blueprints. I went over to talk to him to see what was going on. He was talking about how he want to expand the rides to behind the ballroom. In fact, he did move the Spider and a couple of others there.
He needed more room to expand the park. In fact, they owned the land across the street from the Helter-Skelter, and he was planning on putting more things over there. In 1984, Pat Duffy Junior told Amusement Business, “I do see a light at the end of the tunnel.”
He had told me before that one of the largest hotel chains (I'm not going to say which one) had offered him quite a bit of money for the land Idora Park was on because they wanted to build a hotel next to Mill Creek Park. The money they offered would have covered the expense of moving Idora Park to another location.
Mr. Duffy told me he didn't want to move the park because it was part of Youngstown and it was part of his family. His dad ran the park, he ran the park, and he wanted his son Pat Duffy the Third to run the park someday.
The last day the park was open was St. Elizabeth Hospital Day at Idora Park. In fact, that was the day that I got Pat Duffy Junior to sign the softball that came out of the punk rack. As he signed it, we talked for a while before I left. And even with the fire, he said they weren’t quite sure what they were going to do, that they would like to keep the park open.
In the fall of 1984, his wife had become ill and was at St. Elizabeth’s hospital where I was working. I ran into Pat quite a few times, and he looked very tired. The one time I was talking to him, I said to him, “Pat, you really don’t look that good, you should get checked.”
He sighed at me and gave me that look – that Pat Duffy Junior look. I said to him, “I take it you’ve heard this before?”
And he said, “Yes, but I’m just really busy now with my wife being ill and the park.”
Two months later, he passed away, on January 6, 1985. Pat Duffy Junior was a fair and very good boss. He was a friend to all his workers, and he was a good friend to me.