When American novelist John Steinbeck told Patricia Wilson "It's a helluva story, Pat, you should write it " she didn't know it would take her nearly fifty years to get around to it. Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes: The Fabulous Life Of A Happy Has-Been tells the story of a third generation actress from a theatrical family, a child performer who grew up to become a star during Broadway's "Golden Age" and a respected Hollywood actress. Set against an authentic backdrop of theatrical, TV, and film history, the story spills over with anecdotes of the celebrated-Jackie Gleason, Richard Burton, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carol Burnett, and among others, Bob Fosse and Gene Kelly ("I wasn't a dancer, and I was too tall for both of them ") But Patricia Wilson's personal life reads, in her words, "like a Danielle Steel novel " This is a compelling tale of an everywoman's journey through love, loss, success and sorrow. Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes: The Fabulous Life Of A Happy Has-Been won First Place For Excellence In Writing at The Santa Barbara Writers Conference, 2007. "Fiorello opened in 1959, won the Pulitzer Prize, and Patricia Wilson was one of its stars. She played Marie LaGuardia, wife of New York's still most beloved mayor, and did it with uncommon grace, charm-and yes, loveliness. Every word sung or spoken by Pat possessed extraordinary intelligence and modesty, and she was crucial to the success of that show. Her reminiscences make delightful reading..."...Harold S. "Hal" Prince "-lucid, touching, candid, human-I've applauded your singing and acting-now I'm delighted to applaud your writing.Brava .....Sheldon Harnick "Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes: The Fabulous Life Of A Happy Has-Been. has all the qualities of a fine novel: funny, sometimes painfully touching, with sharply defined characters, cinematic flair, pungent dialogue, big close-ups, eloquent flashbacks, and voice-over asides, it is theatrical and film history as well as personal memoir, an intriguing blend of the two..."...Cork Millner, author: Hollywood Be Thy Name, The Warner Brothers Story "What a privilege to read this memoir I was riveted, and impressed by the deep spiritual strength Pat expresses. The rich theatrical heritage of her parents and grandparents is not only important to her personal story, but to that of our country..."...Preshy Marker, actress (A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum) "A lively and unpretentious autobiography Patricia Wilson has written a book that can hold its own with the best of celebrity memoirs..."...David Meyers, music historian Patricia Wilson is a familiar face, "like a comfortable old shoe, one most folks think they've met in the neighborhood supermarket or PTA." In reality, she is a veteran of the Broadway stage, four TV series, some 200 primetime episodes, nineteen films, two soap operas, and commercials too numerous to count. Born in Columbus, Ohio, to actor/entertainer parents, she grew up singing in her mother's act, and worked her way through Ohio State University "warbling on the radio and selling gas ranges on WBNS-TV." After graduating in three years with honors and a BA in English, she and her college sweetheart married and left Columbus for New York. "My father convinced me I wasn't pretty enough to go to Hollywood." Since that time, she has worked "everywhere, including Hollywood." Mother of two grown daughters, Pat currently lives in Sherman Oaks, California, with Pete, "a codependent Chihuahua." She is writing her second book, a novel.

The articles in this book are part of a collection produced by my mother, Ruth Vivian (Greathouse) Orzalli, while writing a Bi- Weekly “ I REMEMBER “ Column for the Sierra Booster, a Bi-Weekly Newspaper published by Hal Wright in Loyalton California.

In “All My Yesterdays” the author takes his readers from a tiny farm in Texas where he was born in 1930 and his childhood during the Great Depression, to his boyhood in the little agricultural town of Victoria, where he discovered he could sing. He takes you to the port city Galveston during and after World War II, where he went to high school and where he became a popular teenage singer, to his time in the army during the Korean War, from 1951 to 1953, and afterward to Hollywood to pursue a singing career.

"In 1922, at the age of four, Joseph William Meagher contracted polio, leaving him with a back shaped like the harp of his Irish ancestors. Only all-night massaging by the family doctor saved him from a wheelchair life. After a barbaric (and fruitless) treatment to straighten his spine, Joe returned home to the shelter of a loving family. But little by little, the cold eye of the outside world made clear to him how different he was. His parents took medical advice and sent Joe off to Port Jefferson, Long Island, to spend the next four years at a hospital/school for crippled children. Though many there were severely disabled, they had the same unquenchable zest for life as any other kids, and with great innocence and gusto went about the business of being kids in the best way they could. In addition to presenting a picture of the very beginnings of rehabilitative therapy, Broken Yesterdays is the unswervingly candid and often amusing memoir of a boy who learned early that tears did no good, and that he faced a choice: Either surrender to the bitterness of being different or, through strength of will, make the best of what he had in him. Fortunately for his readers, Joseph William Meagher made the right choice."

When Serena Cassidy travels to Virginia to attend the 110th anniversary of Longworth College, she expects little more than an interesting trip and a chance to honor the memory of her parents, who had died the year before and had loved the college which was their alma mater. She wants to find out more about Serena Longworth, the founder’s wife, who was a great friend to her parents and after whom they had named her. Also, she hopes to relieve some of her loneliness and grief and to have a respite from her uncomfortable recent lifestyle and job. But when she suddenly finds herself in 1908, she has no idea how she got there. And even as she begins to feel that this place and era are where she really belongs, and wonders if she is actually Serena Longworth, she questions how she can ever explain her strange presence to the much-too-attractive founder, Trenton Longworth, and his sister, Constance, with whom she comes to feel she could have a new family.