Patrick Welsh '64 understood early in life that learning another language-or in his case many languages-could open entirely new worlds. And so, as a teenager growing up on the west side of Chicago, he'd often pay visits to a gentleman who ran a bookstore in Chinatown.
"He taught me Mandarin-which I came to learn later was a hillbilly version of Mandarin," Welsh said from his home outside Atlanta, where he is retired after an international banking career that brought him face-to-face with Chinese leaders during the Deng Xiaoping era.
After graduating from St. Ambrose, he took a job with Prentice Hall, selling textbooks. During a sales visit at the University of Kansas, he met Professor Richard Spear, PhD, the head of the Oriental Languages and Literature Department.
"I was very interested in what he was doing, particularly with the tonal aspects of oriental languages, and soon quit my job and enrolled in the program," Welsh said.
He graduated in just 18 months, and eventually took a position with Northern Trust Company in Chicago. They were looking for Americans who spoke the languages of countries with which the bank wanted to work. China happened to be at the top of their list.
"I learned how to read credit balance and income statements, and how other countries kept their books-but that was not what established such strong relationships with our Chinese counterparts," he said. "The Chinese were more open with me because we'd speak about their culture and politics, and not just the transactions we may have been there to discuss. It developed trust."
That approach tied directly to his St. Ambrose education. A second-generation Ambrosian scholar, Welsh dove into political science, and minored in both German and Russian. It wasn't until after he left the school-and came face-to-face with some of China's most powerful leaders -that he understood the value of his education.
"My professors said a lot of things that didn't really sink in until after I had left Ambrose," he said. "I'd be in the Far East, and I'd have these moments in which I'd realize, ‘My gosh, they were spot on about history and politics and more.'"
Today, he writes for China Insight, a publication started by Greg Hugh '64, a former St. Ambrose classmate. He still travels to Asia and spent a semester teaching English at Sichuan University, where prior to giving a speech, he was introduced as a "pioneer of Chinese-American relations."
"The truth is I have always just wanted to learn more from others," he said.
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