Slain Couple Eulogized as Devoted to Community

For more than 60 years, everyone said, Albert and Edna Patton were seldom apart. There they were, pictured on vacation in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then toasting their 40th wedding anniversary. And when he was appointed a county commissioner, she was there.

The moments were captured in enlarged black and white photographs displayed at the memorial service Thursday for the slain couple, as about 200 people gathered at Brookins Community African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles.

Albert Patton, 90, who once scouted for the Harlem Globetrotters, and his wife of 63 years, Edna, were found slain on May 27 in their three-story home on South La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles. He was found in the kitchen. Edna Patton, 85, was found in the bedroom with multiple stab wounds. She was in a lower-body cast, recovering from hip surgery.

Stevie Bernard Jackson, 34, of Los Angeles, a former tenant of the Pattons, was charged Tuesdaywith two counts of murder with special circumstances and one count of robbery.

Family members of the couple said that their deaths should be used to reaffirm a commitment to ending violence in the couple’s South Los Angeles neighborhood, which the Pattons influenced through their charisma and charity.

“It really opened my eyes to how desensitized I had become to acts of violence,” said great-niece Kim Foster. “Maybe by being more mindful, we can be more active in making an impact on stopping violence.”

Family and friends chose to celebrate the lives of the Pattons. They remarked on the couple’s generosity; they spoke of a civic-minded, yet flamboyant Albert, who cruised the neighborhood in his silver Rolls-Royce and was eager to pass on life lessons to young black males.

Edna Patton, said friend Steve Bagby, “was the wind beneath his wings.” She also managed the apartments the Pattons owned and operated for more than 40 years.

“She was a strong lady,” said niece Monique Foster, and inseparable from her husband. “What one did, the other did.”

The couple were affectionately remembered as Uncle Al and Aunt Edna by friends and family.

Albert Patton co-founded the national 100 Black Men organization and helped launch its Young Black Scholars program for disadvantaged youths. The couple did not have children of their own, but they provided scholarships to aspiring students and seemed to be parents to many in the West Adams community.

“They believed in young people,” said Ray Mayberry, a deputy in City Councilman Nate Holden’s office, who escorted Albert to his doctor’s appointments. “That’s all he talked about [too], was young people and 100 Black Men.”

The couple’s walls were lined with 40 years worth of photographs, a who’s who that included Muhammad Ali, the late Mayor Tom Bradley and Nat King Cole.

Albert and Edna were married in Minneapolis in 1937, then moved to Los Angeles. He worked a variety of jobs until he joined Lockheed in Burbank. He also worked as a scout for the Harlem Globetrotters, and his recruits included stars Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal, his family said.

After 20 years of work in the aerospace industry, he retired to build and operate apartments.

Pastor Frederick Murph called the deaths a “wake-up call for people to come together and make this community work.”

Police described the suspect as a cocaine abuser who had been hard pressed to pay for his habit. A community informant reportedly told police that the couple had given Jackson money on previous occasions.

The special-circumstance allegations could make Jackson eligible for the death penalty. He is scheduled to enter a plea June 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court.