Beloved by his students in the Ripon High School JROTC, Lt.Col Patrick Dunn passed away quietly Wednesday afternoon with his family members by his side in his Ripon home following a lengthy illness.
Dunn’s 45 years of military service and his devotion to Ripon students was celebrated last year in the Ripon Community Center at his retirement celebration when 20 of his cadets took the microphone and told how Dunn had positively affected their lives through his leadership while in the Ripon High unit.
Dunn told the crowd that he and his wife lived an average of two years at any one duty assignment until they moved to Ripon and he was hired by then RUSD superintendent Leo Zuber and continued to call Ripon home for 15 years.  Dunn served the Ripon High School Battalion from 2001 until 2015 as its senior U.S. Army instructor.  During that time he coached the JROTC drill team taking them to the West Coast Regional Championships in both 2012 and 2013. 
Ripon’s JROTC program achieved the status of the Honor Unit with Distinction each year with only 10 percent of like units across the country having achieved that honor.
Dunn was born into a military family in Paris, France in 1949 and has lived in Germany as well as the United States, having attended six elementary schools and three high schools and graduated from Killeen High in Texas in 1968.  He received his commission in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant through the ROTC and attained a Masters degree in Military Science from Command and General Staff College in 1990.
His services are pending.