Patrick Crowley

Pat Crowley, a kind-hearted, smart man, a dear friend and devoted husband and family man, who spent his career as a computational physicist in the US atomic weapons program, pursued lifelong passions as a musician, photographer, traveler, hiker, and olive orchardist, passed away at age 87 in Westwind Memory Care in Santa Cruz, California, on March 5th, 2023 from Alzheimer’s Disease, accelerated by COVID-19.

William Patrick Crowley was born to Michael J. Crowley and Nelle Slemmons on April 6, 1935 in Ketchikan, Alaska. Pat spent his childhood in Ketchikan, Seattle, and San Diego. and had a lifelong love of boats, ships, the sea. During his teenage years, he worked on his grandmother’s halibut boat in Seattle, had a newspaper route, fishing, and helping out his mother in the bar she owned. He graduated from Ketchikan High School as the Salutatorian, after an a very active career in band, government, sports, and fire squad in addition to academics. After graduating Pat moved to San Diego and attended San Diego State College studying math and physics and later earned a masters degree from UC Berkeley.

His career at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (Rad Lab) began in 1958 as a computational physicist in the early days of the theoretical physics department and was a pioneer in computational fluid dynamics. “A lot of this was being done late at night,” said Pat, in a 1995 interview in which he describes the life of computational physicist — work a full day, go home to dinner, “and then come back, and work from 8 or 9 at night to 2 in the morning. And then we’d go out to the Hungry Truck and have pancakes or eggs and hash browns.”

After hours he and his colleagues, including Chuck Leith, relaxed by developing early atmospheric weather models. They worked closely on the very difficult topic of modeling turbulence in fluids, much of that work remains the state-of-the-art. In 1967, he wrote a numerical model on the world’s oceans. LLNL was a great place to work and supported him in his creative approaches. He developed many enduring friendships with people he met there, including Maggie Gee (American aviator, WWII WASP, and a computational physicist), Bob and Ruth Freis, Don and Miriam Miller, Ed and Harriet Garelis, among many others.

Pat and Betty married in January 1989 in Livermore, California, and they had a long and happy marriage. They lived in the Livermore hills, and after retiring they planted an olive orchard. They traveled the world, mostly taking cruises, going as far south as Antarctica and as far north as Scotland. They moved to Russian Hill in San Francisco, where Pat could follow the harbor traffic from his radio and window, listen to the fog horns, bring home fresh crab from Fisherman’s Wharf, walk the hills, dine out, and attend the local theater and symphony.

Pat’s life-long passion was playing piano and he came from a musical family. After seeing the movie, The Sting, in the 1970s, Pat started playing ragtime. He earned the nickname Ragtime Man because he played ragtime music at local venues. He and friend journalist Joan Boar directed inmates in a musical in Santa Rita’s Women’s Prison in the 1990s, and he accompanied many local melodrama productions. He loved playing American standards accompanied by his friend Bob Freis on the sax, with family and friends singing along, and duets.

Pat was an excellent cook and he enjoyed preparing and sharing meals with his friends. He had a deep appreciation for fine dining and red wines. He loved hiking and camping at favorite places in the Sierra Nevada and hiked some of the Pacific Crest Trail, and was an avid wildflower photographer. Pat was a kind, thoughtful, loving, creative and generous man, with a good sense of humor. We miss his warm bear hugs and his kind and wise words.

Pat leaves behind his wife Betty Crowley of 34 years, his stepdaughter Beverly Norleen (Craig Norleen) and step grandson Will Jaeger of Santa Cruz, CA, his stepdaughter Lauren Jaeger, and step grandson Joel Jaeger (Asia Jaeger) of Laverne, CA. Pat was preceded in death by his parents, and many dear friends.