Yesterday we were saddened to learn that the president of a longtime Advanced Accounting user had recently died.
At age 76, Gene Patterson had still been very much active in the business operations of PatCo, Inc. an industrial and contractors supplier specializing in fire safety equipment located in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and had been its president for the past 28 years. Gene's son Roger, with some 27 years of experience and formerly the vice president of PatCo, will be continuing to lead the company.
Gene also served in the National Guard.
Our first contact with Gene was in July of 1995. His company at that time was using Advanced Accounting 5.0 published by Business Tools, Inc. We were engaged to make a number of custom program modifications which were completed that month. Only a few months later, we held our first ever Advanced Accounting seminar (in St. Louis) and had the privilege of meeting Gene and one of his employees. Gene would later also attend a seminar that we held in Salt Lake City in the fall of 2000.
We continued to provide technical support and custom program services as needed including the software and programming assistance to convert PatCo's system from Advanced Accounting 5.0 to 5.1 by the end of 1998, and continued a relationship through to the present. PatCo continues to use the 5.1 version in 2015.
As is often the case with longtime users, often we would not hear from PatCo for long periods of time. From 2003 to 2008 we would sometimes not hear from them for more than once or twice per year, or sometimes not for an entire year or more. There was a three year period from late 2008 to late 2011 when we had no contact at all. Prior to the call the other day when we learned of Gene's passing, we had not heard from anyone there since July of 2014.
Gene and his staff were always a pleasure to deal with. He typified the hard working, long-lived entrepreneurial spirit of business owners that use Advanced Accounting.
We often don't get the opportunity to say thank you to customers like Gene and to companies like PatCo that we have had the opportunity to work with, in this case over a twenty-year period. Thank you.
And we salute Gene for the hard work he put into his business that unquestionably had a positive impact on the local community and the lives of others.
