Alison Buttrick Patton leaves Saugatuck Congregational Church soon, for a new ministry in Maine. For more than a decade, the pastor has made her mark on Westport.
So has her husband.
Sandra Long nominates Craig Patton as this week’s Unsung Hero.
She says: “My life has intersected with Craig’s in many ways. I originally met him at church, and my family was involved with Scout Troop 36 for many years. Craig was an Eagle Scout himself, and has won numerous adult leadership awards from the Scouts.
“In addition, Craig has worked with me at Post Road Consulting for the past 10 years. He has been fantastic with our clients.
“He just started a second job working for Atlantic Sea Farms ( a vertically integrated kelp company) as a brand ambassador.
“Craig is an environmentalist and an outdoorsman. He taught the Scouts to care about nature as well. Craig brought his love of nature to the church too, through various programs.
Craig Patton: outdoorsman …
“He worked with the Friends of Sherwood Island, as a board member and communications and marketing committee chair.
“He was also very active as a Staples Players parent, and a Little League coach.” (The Pattons’ sons, Tobey and Ian, were multi-faceted actors.)
“Craig constantly balances his very full life. Somehow he gets everything done, but he never stops moving forward.
Tom Long adds: “I worked with the Scouts for about 5 years, as troop committee chairman.
“A major tenet to Craig’s success in Scouting deals with the concept of ‘boys teaching boys’: older Scouts teaching newer and younger ones, with directions from Craig. He made sure the older boys were heavily involved with the planning and implementation of outings, trips and weekly meetings.
… Scout leader …
“I was particularly impressed with Craig’s response to COVID. He very quickly shifted gears to online meetings.
“Post-pandemic, Craig created meetings outdoors at the Church. In a situation that could have derailed the program, Craig not only maintained interest in Scouting, but actually increased membership in Troop 36.”
Similarly, Mark Mathias says: “Craig has always backed up Alison in her work. Most notably, when the pandemic started both immediately jumped into doing more than a boring Zoom meeting. They created essentially a video production each week that on YouTube.
Here is one example from June 2020, just after the killing of George Floyd:
We then moved to livestreaming services, with equipment we cobbled together from various gear the Pattons and I had in our homes.
All of this was without any budget. Craig took the lead on the tech and how to make it happen. I assisted him, while Alison was the primary face in front of the camera. This would not have happened without Craig.
Once we started working on the new A/V system, Craig was instrumental in ensuring it was what was needed. Now that it’s installed, he’s our primary contact with the vendor.
More importantly, every week he generates content for the live streams, and is almost every week in the bell loft running either sound or audio (sometimes both), ensuring that worshipers in the sanctuary and online have a great experience.
Craig also has a great eye for what looks good visually, how to position cameras, what visual graphics work well and more.
Thanks, Craig, for all you have done for Saugatuck Church, Scout Troop 36, and many others in Westport. And thanks, Alison, for sharing this week’s Unsung Hero with us!
… and livestream engineer.
Do you know an Unsung Hero? Send nominations to: 06880blog@gmail.com.
(If you enjoy weekly features like the Unsung Hero, please consider a contribution to “06880.” Just click here — and thank you!)
Rev. Patton came to Westport from First Church Simsbury in 2012. The congregation was reeling from a pre-Thanksgiving fire. Only a fire wall had saved the nearly 200-year-old building — the place where Westport was established as a town, in 1835 — from complete destruction.
