Patti Blue Publishes ‘The 100 Foot Love Letter’

By Dan Guarino

From musician to author, Rockaway’s Patricia McCartin has taken a new creative direction with her just published book, “The 100 Page Love Letter.”

Known as singer Patti Blue on stage, her book is a deep dive into the mystery of a love, a letter and a life that all occurred before she was born. Page by page, she reveals the tale told in the fragile, hand-written sheets, kept carefully, but kept quietly, by her family for nearly a century.

Patricia Ann McCartin, the youngest of five children of Frank and Drusilla McCartin, was born and raised in Astoria, Queens. “I’ve been coming to Rockaway since I was an infant,” she says, “where my Grandparents lived in 107-10 Shore Front Parkway in Rockaway Beach. ‘Til I became an adult, when I decided I wanted to live by the ocean.” In 1990, she bought a co-op in Dayton Towers.

About her music career McCartin says, “I’ve always been in bands and played in different clubs growing up. I always sang since I was little. My father was a police officer…working in Chinatown. He loved when I would sing him the song ‘Downtown.’” Even while working in the corporate world, singing in bands, she knew she had a natural gift. Testing the waters post-Covid, McCartin performed at various venues with many Rockaway musicians. With Billy Salvatore and Ron Bongo, she formed Patti Blue and the Boyz, and has been honored to perform at benefits for veterans, autism and at the Little North Pole for juvenile diabetes.

But her transition to author didn’t come from her finding her voice, but from reluctantly inheriting a box. One day as a child, her mother was sharing photo scrapbooks with her when she “noticed a box in the closet that was a Christmas box. It was wrapped with ribbon around it. But the seams were like ripping ‘cause it was so stuffed.

“I asked my mom, ‘What’s in this box?’ and right then and there she told me ‘Don’t touch it.’” Asking again, the answer was flatly the same. “And that was the end of that.”

It remained a mystery for decades. McCartin’s mother passed away in 2017. Before he died three years later, her father handed the box’s contents to her sister. “It was in a manila envelope, stuffed in a bag,” McCartin said.

Packed away inside was a letter. Who wrote it, what it contained, why it was written, all remained unknown. One thing was clear though. McCartin didn’t want it.

When her sister tried to pass it off to her, she said, “No, I have enough stuff …and I’m in a one-bedroom apartment.” Yet, as if it was meant to be, she ended up with it anyway. Leaving after a visit one Easter, her niece and sister quietly slipped it into her car, and she drove away with it.

Vaguely knowing it had something to do with her father, she says, “I was still afraid to go near it. So, it sat on my dining room table for about three weeks. I didn’t want to be doing anything (that might) be disloyal to my mother.

“But then curiosity crept up on me. I noticed that one of the top corner pages was bent and it said 1945, and that’s what set off a light bulb in my head.” Questioning family, she confirmed her parents met in 1949.

Her mother, a Bell Telephone operator living in Manhattan, was invited by a co-worker to come to Astoria “because she was going to meet some guy” and “a tag-along friend.” She was immediately attracted to the tall tag-along friend, who would later be McCartin’s father. They married in 1950.

Knowing this now, McCartin unfolded and read the whole letter. “It is so delicately written on onion paper and taped in long sheets and shorts of paper,” she said.

To her surprise, it opened a door into the past, and to “a young woman who met my father in 1945 while he was transporting from Astoria, NY to California” on his way to serve as a Seabee with the U.S. Navy’s Construction Battalions, in Okinawa, Japan.

Marion worked for a Hollywood studio, where one woman made a bet, she couldn’t write a 100-foot love letter to her beau Frank overseas. “Not only is it romantic, but it’s like going back in a time capsule with all the events and happenings. She is funny and her mindset is how she talks about things and keeps you captivated.” Writing foot by foot, Marion weaves in stories, jokes, colorful depictions of her co-workers, who even chime in directly. As Frank wrote back, she incorporated her replies into the letter, which now became a story.

“I could see how this girl loved him so much that she writes non-stop day and night, for like 26 days straight,” McCartin says. “I said to myself this letter has a purpose. I read it, 100-feet long…and said, I’m supposed to do something with this.”

First, she and friend Lela Leland made copies of the delicate pages, then

Melanie Taffel typed it up “exactly the way the original wording and print was found.” Leslie Butera helped with “her inspirational words and talent as a writer.” McCartin engaged her friend, author/publisher Shane Kulman to bring it all “to its final destination,” then help launch and promote it.

Two years in the making, “The 100-Foot Love Letter” is now available at Amazon.com and getting heartfelt reviews.

McCartin is hosting book launch/signing events this Saturday, March 15, from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., at Shannonigans by the Park, 19-19 Ditmars Blvd., Astoria, and Veteran In Command, 116-16 Rockaway Beach Blvd., on Saturday April 26 at 3 p.m.

Meanwhile, her new six-piece band featuring guitarist Lou Gerraro, Patti Blue & the Rockaways is playing locally and elsewhere.

Within her new book, she sees the basis for a play, then a movie, with its cast of characters and music of the era.

“It’s so exciting to travel back in that kind of time,” McCartin says. And to bring a long-ago piece of her own family story into the present with “The 100 Foot Love Letter.”