Solitude & the Stars

In 1940 the artistic talent of Louis Patton, then twelve years old, attracted the attention of a West Hartford, Conn, newspaper. Though frail and shy, Louis seemed ambitious, told the paper that he was willing to try anything--"soda jerking, maybe"--to earn enough money for a trip to Hollywood, where he wanted to work for Walt Disney. Four years later, when he was 16, Louis dropped out of high school. Explained his father, Orall Patton: "Louis couldn't stand the drinking by the high-school boys, especially their breath."

For the next nine years Louis Patton just stayed home, pursuing solitude on the second floor of his family's white frame house in West Hartford. He passed the time happily, studying anatomy, doing clay sculptures and carving tiny, intricate heads on pencil ends. His doting mother, Constance Patton, stood guard over the boy's privacy, saw to it that he paid no attention to his father, who wanted Louis to lead a more normal life.

It wasn't as though Louis was a prisoner, one of his sisters pointed out last week. On several occasions he slipped off to New York escorted by his mother or younger brother, who died in an automobile accident last December while serving in the Army. And six times during those nine years Louis left the house long enough to make an inconspicuous trip to a local barbershop. (In between visits to the barber, Louis trimmed his own hair with a cutting comb.) One thing he didn't bother to do, however, was register for the draft. Constance Patton, an ardent believer in astrology, never felt the stars were quite right for this step.

Over the years most people forgot that Louis had ever existed, but last week an FBI agent called at the Patton home. (The family later decided that Louis must have been betrayed by a sister's estranged husband.) Mr. Patton, who answered the door, called to Louis to come downstairs. But it was Mrs. Patton, not Louis, who came down. While she ordered the agent out of the house, Louis slipped down the back stairs and got clean away. As soon as she could, Mrs. Patton joined her son and hustled him off to New York. There the FBI finally caught up with the pair, found in their possession $1,000 in cash and train tickets to Los Angeles.

At week's end Louis Patton had been freed on $2,000 bail, was back home in West Hartford, where his mother once again was guarding his privacy. On Aug. 19 Louis Patton will have to come out of seclusion to face charges of draft evasion. No charges at all have been placed against his mother.

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