Patrick McMonagle

Patrick McMonagle was born in Aberdeen on June 5, 1948, to Rodger and Ruth (Duff) McMonagle. After growing up in and around Hoquiam, his family moved to Seattle’s north side, where he graduated from Roosevelt High School in 1966. At Roosevelt, he first discovered his passion for folk dancing, performing with a German group at the school. After brief service in the Army, Patrick enrolled at the University of Washington and immersed himself in its folk dancing scene, leading and co-leading dances held by People to People International and He’ari. He was a founder of the Seattle Folkdance Festival in 1969, running that annual event until 1974, and was among the organizers of the first ever Northwest Folklife Festival in 1972, where he continued as a community leader of polka and zwiefacher dancing for many decades.

Professionally, Patrick entered the field of computing in the early 1970s, having transferred to North Seattle Community College and completing his AA degree there in 1974. His work took him briefly to the East Coast, but by 1976 he was back in Seattle to stay. Over his long career, he worked with many businesses, ranging from Eddie Bauer to Boeing, from Salmon Terminals to Wang Laboratories. Patrick loved solving problems (especially in COBOL), and loved the personal connections he made across a myriad of different industries and sectors.

Through it all, Patrick kept dancing—he taught international dance at local Mountaineers clubs, he led folkdances for Seattle’s Swedish Club, and he held dance events for the Skandia Folkdance Society all over the region. He traveled to teach dance at festivals across the country, from Junction City, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts, and many points in-between. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Patrick found new ways to bring dancers together, creating a Zoom class for Zwiefacher dancing that he continued to teach every week for the rest of his life. It would be impossible to list every festival and event for which Patrick ever organized a dance: if you folk danced anywhere in the Pacific Northwest in the last 60 years, you almost certainly met Patrick, and if you learned a new folk dance locally during these last six decades, it may well have been Pat teaching you the steps. “This one’s easy,” he’d say, and with his encouragement, thousands of people over the years learned that it really was.

Patrick was also a student of dance as an art form. He began building a personal index of folk dances on punch cards in 1967, and that index (long since converted to a digital file) holds tens of thousands of entries today. His personal collection of rare 78rpm records has been digitized by the Internet Archive, at Patrick’s request and with his enthusiastic participation, so that the dances of eras past can continue to be rediscovered.

Patrick’s first marriage, in 1979, was to Eva Hare: he and Eva raised two daughters, Elizabeth and Kathleen, in the Bitter Lake neighborhood of North Seattle. After their marriage ended, in 2006 Patrick wedded Marjorie Nugent, becoming a stepfather to her daughter, Vielle. In recent years he also reconnected with Lisa, a daughter he had placed for adoption prior to either of his marriages, welcoming her into his life. Of all the roles he played in his family, perhaps none suited him better than the life of a grandfather who could sing and dance, tell stories and jokes, and cater to his young audience. He loved and was loved in return.

Patrick had the good fortune of living the life he loved to the end, continuing to be a friendly and active neighbor and a local dance teacher, and even returning to the UW campus to serve as an usher and greeter at sporting events, particularly at Husky football games. On April 17, 2025, Patrick died at Harborview Medical Center from injuries received in a car accident. A celebration of his life will be held at the Whidbey Island Nordic Lodge Hall in Coupeville on Sunday, June 15, at 1:00pm. Those attending should bring favorite stories or photos to contribute to an album.