Patrick Swayze: One Last Dance

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Deep in the Heart of Texas

Patrick Swayze was born in Texas, the second largest U.S. state — a state which, like him, is dramatically larger than life. But while he has always been universally regarded as the quintessential Texan, a close examination of his paternal roots tells quite another story.

While a large number of Texans boast Spanish, Mexican, or Indian ancestry, Patrick, in contrast, can trace his lineage back to England, where in 1619 his ancestor, John Swasey (sometimes known as "Sweezy"), was born in Bridgeport, Dorset. Christened at the church of St. Mary's, Bridgeport, in 1633, John Swasey sailed to Massachusetts on The Recovery. There he became a planter and, in 1640, purchased four acres of land in Salem, Essex County.

In May 1650, John Swasey married Katherine Kinge of Essex, England. Some genealogists claim that Swasey was one of the earliest Quakers, citing this as the reason for his refusing to take the oath of fidelity to the colony of New Haven. Whatever the grounds for his refusal, not taking the oath made him persona non grata in Salem. Consequently, in 1658 he and his wife moved to Southold, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. In 1706, at the age of eighty-six, he died in Acquefague, Suffolk County, leaving seven children behind.

One of those children, Joseph Swasey (born 1653), married Mary Betts and had six children with her. Samuel Swayze — later a judge — was born to Joseph and Mary in 1689 and was one of the first family members on record to use the modern-day spelling of the Swayze name.

In 1736, Samuel Swayze, his wife Penelope Horton, and their children moved from Long Island to Black River, Chester Township, Morris County, New Jersey, where they bought a parcel of land.

Samuel was a fervent Congregationalist, and in 1747 he and his fellow Congregationalists built their own meetinghouse with pews and galleries seating four hundred and worshipped there together. In 1753, Samuel Swayze Jr. (born in 1712) became the first pastor of the church, where he served as minister for the next twenty years.

In 1772, Samuel Swayze Jr. led a group of seventy-two families on a migration from Black River to the outskirts of Natchez, Adams County, Mississippi, where he formed a Congregationalist church. Soon he and his flock became known as the Jersey Settlers, who are today considered an integral and highly respected part of the history of the South.

Strangely enough, when Patrick made his big career breakthrough starring as Orry Main in North and South, part of the miniseries was filmed in Natchez. When Patrick received great acclaim for his acting in the miniseries, he gave masses of press interviews yet never mentioned that he is a direct descendant of the Reverend Samuel Swayze Jr., the most famous of all the Jersey Settlers, or brought up the coincidence of North and South being filmed in Natchez, the home of his ancestral forebears.

Nor did he ever broach the subject of his other celebrated relatives: Stalag 17 star William Holden, his seventh and eighth cousin (because Reverend Samuel Swayze and his brother Richard married their own cousins, who were themselves sisters), and Amadeus actor Tom Hulce, another, more distant cousin.

Patrick's Texas roots on his father's side begin only with his great-grandfather, James Wesley Swayze, who originally lived in Franklin Parish, Louisiana, before moving to Texas. From then on, the Swayzes were true Texans, born and bred. Texas is the birthplace of Patrick's paternal grandfather, Jesse Elijah Swayze, and his maternal grandparents, Victor and Gladys Karnes — and his parents Jesse Wayne and Patsy Swayze, both regarded themselves as Texan to the core.

In many ways, Patrick was the embodiment of Southern pride. No matter how famous he would become, he never jettisoned his Southern values or his Southern manners. As a matter of fact, when he was on the threshold of becoming a star and his agent chided him for calling men "sir," he rounded on him indignantly and declared, "That's insanity," and in no uncertain terms informed him that he was brought up the Southern way and was proud of it. "You hold the door for women, you pull their chair. It's your job, it's not a macho thing."

Then, switching tacks, with a characteristic twinkle he added a caveat: "If you say 'sir' in a different context, it can be also very dangerous. 'Sir, you mess with me one more time and I break every bone in your body.' "

"There's a real power to Texans. Texas gives you a belief in yourself," he said with considerable pride on a 1986 visit back home. "There's a lot of emotion involved in being in Houston. This is my hometown! These are my roots!"

The TV series Dallas has ensured that as far as most of the world is concerned, Houston has been relegated to the second-best-known city in Texas. However, Houston is a far more international, multicultural city than Dallas. Apart from being the location of NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, one of Houston's other major claims to fame is that it boasts the second largest concentration of theater seats in any downtown area in the United States.

Horses, too, are the business of Houston, and Patrick's paternal grandfather, Bud, was the foreman of the King Ranch — the largest horse- and cattle-breeding ranch in the Lone Star State, sprawling across six counties. When Patrick was a boy, his grandfather tied Patrick's wrists to a ram's horns and his feet to the ram's belly and let him go. "By the time I got off, I was close to unconscious," he recalled. "But I've always said since then, 'If it's got hair on it, I can ride it.' " His father too was a horseman, a Texas state champion cowboy, so it was hardly surprising that Patrick grew up to cherish horses in all their glory.

A love of horses was in his blood, and so too was dancing. His mother, Patsy, (born Patricia Yvonne Helen Karnes on February 7, 1927), was not only a gifted dancer herself but would also become one of the most influential dance teachers and choreographers of her generation.

His father, Jesse Wayne Swayze — nicknamed "Big Buddy" — was a tall, muscular, handsome man with jet black hair and blue eyes who bore some resemblance to Cary Grant yet retained the veneer of a tough macho Texan.

When Patsy and Big Buddy met in 1944, Patsy was seventeen and spirited, Big Buddy was eighteen and dashing. From the first, the passion that flared between them was inevitable. She was on the threshold of graduating from the Incarnate Word Academy of Houston, the oldest Catholic school in that city (a school which she would later credit as having taught her "that there is no such thing as failure"), and Big Buddy had enlisted in the navy. After learning that he was about to be shipped overseas, Patsy and Big Buddy were married in Missouri City, Texas, on August 6, 1944, just two weeks before Patsy's graduation day.

Their first child, Vicky, was born in 1949, followed by Patrick three years later. Like one out of every nine native Houstonians, including Kenny Rogers and Barbara Mandrell, he was born at the art deco-style St. Joseph Hospital, which was founded by the Catholic Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1887. His brother Don was born in 1958 and Sean in 1962.

The Swayzes' first home in Garden Oak was adjacent to their next home in the romantic-sounding Candlelight Wood area of Oak Forest, a large residential community in northwest Houston that was established in 1947, with most of the houses sold to World War II veterans for between $8,000 and $10,000. The Swayzes were to live there through most of Patrick's childhood, right into his late twenties. Almost rural in character, yet less than ten miles from the heart of Houston, Oak Forest, situated literally in the midst of a forest, was safe, suburban, even beautiful, and the Swayzes' two-storey Greek revival-style antebellum house on Del Norte was the ideal setting in which to raise a family.

However, even in the early pre-feminist fifties, powerhouse Patsy wasn't about to become a desperate housewife on a Houstonian Wisteria Lane.

Fate in the form of a car had run her down when she was a child and caused her to take up dancing as a form of physical therapy. Soon — through her formidable will, one which she would share with her eldest son, Patrick — she became a dedicated dancer prepared to suffer the grueling hours of practice and hard work in quest of the joy of devoting herself to her art, her raison d'être and her lifelong passion.

Initially she studied with Marcella Donovan Perry, the formidable ballerina and Broadway dancer who infused both style and discipline into her dancing. By the time Patrick was born, Patsy was already well established as Houston's premiere dance teacher and choreographer. A liberated woman far ahead of her time, she founded and directed the acclaimed Houston Jazz Ballet Company, helped to develop Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, choreographed countless musicals, and ran her own dance company and dance studio, where she taught ballet, tap, and jazz to generations of students, including Patrick.

"I kind of came out of the womb onstage. I can't recall a time in my life when I wasn't dancing," he has said. And while he wasn't exactly born in a trunk in the Princess Theater, Pocatello, Idaho, like Judy Garland's Esther Blodgett in A Star Is Born, as a babe in arms he was carried onstage during an operetta, already in show business before he could even walk or talk.

When he was only eight months old, his mother took him with her to her dance studio, where he'd hoist himself up in his playpen and dance in time to the music, along with her pupils. And, whenever possible, she took him with her to the theater where she was choreographing a show, and he'd either watch mesmerized or sleep contentedly on the theater seats.

At three he had his first ballet lesson with his mother. The group photograph of him in shorts and shirt show him already gleeful and happy, standing with perfect posture among the other tots in the class.

Even at that early age, Patrick's charisma was notable, as his pictures from that time testify. And out of Patsy's four children, "Patrick was the most outgoing," she said. At six he appeared in a children's production of The Most Happy Fella. Soon after, she dressed him in a sailor suit, put tap shoes on his little feet, and taught him how to give an accomplished performance singing and dancing to Shirley Temple's winsomely girlish hit, "On the Good Ship Lollipop."

Above all, through his childhood, teens, and right through high school and into his twenties, his life would revolve around classes and rehearsals at his mother's studio. There his hopes, dreams, ambitions, and the very basis of his character would be forged by Patsy, not only his mother but also his teacher, and set in stone. Copyright © 2009 by Cabochon Diamond LLC