An interview with writer Pat McAfee, English and drama teacher, Wrestling Coach, former Special Forces, Green Beret soldier.
John Patrick “Pat” McAfee – Stepping Over Bones
Pat McAfee’s life read like one of the stories he loved to tell on the air: vivid, sharply observed, and full of unlikely turns. First exposed as a teenager to the writings of W. T. Scott, Poet Laureate of New Mexico and father of his best friend Joel, Pat discovered early that language could cut to the bone and still carry great tenderness. That discovery never left him, and it shaped the voice so many listeners would later come to know on WPVM…. more below….
Shipped off to New Mexico Military Institute, Pat spent the next five years learning discipline, football, and how to make sense of authority and rebellion living side by side. He graduated from both high school and junior college there, carrying away not just a diploma but a storyteller’s trove of West Texas and New Mexico memories that would surface again and again in his writing and on the microphone. Those early years, framed by the desert and the demanding routine of military school, gave him the keen eye and wry humor that animate Stepping Over Bones.
In his essays and broadcasts, Pat moved easily from the personal to the historical, from family lore to the larger currents of American life. He could place a single dusty road, a ranch hand’s offhand remark, or a childhood argument in the wide landscape of culture and politics without ever losing the human scale of the story. Listeners heard in his voice a man who had seen a great deal, remembered almost everything, and still approached the world with curiosity.
Off the air, Pat was a generous mentor and a steady presence for those of us lucky enough to work with him. He encouraged younger producers and hosts to trust their own voices, to get the details right, and to never underestimate an audience’s intelligence. He loved radio because it left room for the imagination, and he loved WPVM because it made room for the kinds of stories and perspectives that rarely find a home elsewhere.
Stepping Over Bones captures Pat at his best: reflective, unsentimental, and deeply alive to the way memory can both haunt and heal. In sharing it again now, we offer it as a small tribute to a life that crossed many borders—geographic, cultural, and generational—and left a clear set of footprints for the rest of us to follow. May his stories continue to travel far beyond the studio, and may his memory be a blessing. JOHN PATRICK MCAFEE ON FACEBOOK
On Rims of Empty Moons (Texas Tech Press),
Slow Walk in a Sad Rain,(Warner Books)
Contributing author on Naked Came the Leaf Peepers (Burning Blush Press)
We look forward to receiving your latest book.