Patrick Summers, longtime owner of McHenry’s After the Fox, dies: ‘One of the originals in this town’

Patrick “Slim” Summers did not have to be present to claim his seat at the McHenry restaurant and bar he owned, according to longtime friend John Todd.

“People wouldn’t sit in his chair whether he was there or not,” Todd said.

Patrick Summers’ chair now sits empty. The owner of McHenry’s After the Fox, located on the Fox River downtown, passed away on Sept. 4 following a lengthy illness.

He was remembered as someone who put on the persona of a grouch, but who was really “a good person, and if you needed anything he would help you,” previous McHenry Mayor Sue Low-Meyer said. “He had that facade of his grouchy self, but that was not who he was.”

Summers purchased After The Fox, a staple of downtown McHenry, in September 1982. Low-Meyer said she got to know him as a customer at the bar. “It was a place where everyone gathered and hung out as long as I can remember.”

She was also one of the friends who got a nickname from him. Although he was known as Slim to many, Low-Meyer called him Patrick and he called her Low, she said.

Getting a nickname from Summers was the ultimate friendship test, Todd said. “If you got a nickname, you were in like Flynn. But you still had to go by the rules” at the bar.

His own nickname, Slim, came from when Patrick Summers delivered Coca-Cola, Todd said. “He was a slim guy when he first started working, maybe 130 pounds of pure dynamite ... driving the big trucks.”

He and Summers travelled together quite a bit, Todd said. When Summers away from his bar, the curmudgeon persona went away “and he was a very different guy,” he said.

When they went into a bar together, Summers would tip the bartender first “to get it out of the way,” Todd said. “By the end of the night he’d be best of friends” with that bartender.

The entire Summers family worked at After the Fox growing up, said son Shawn Summers. He and his wife, Colleen, now run the pub. They took over in 2019, but his father would still be there a few days each week until earlier this summer.

“I was there pretty much every weekend through all of my high school years,” Shawn Summer said.

His father was “one of the originals in this town,” Shawn Summer said.

Todd agreed. “In our lives, we are lucky if we know one or two true characters, people who just have a nature about they that makes them special. Pat was truly a character.”

He was a legend, Low-Meyer said, “because he was a very funny guy. He would always grumble and mumble about something but he was always just so funny.”

Slim also liked to dress well. “He was a flashy dresser. He really liked to stand out” with good shoes, suits and ties, Low-Meyer said. “He was always very dressed up.”

A visitation is set for 3 to 7 p.m. Oct. 16, at Colonial Funeral Home, 591 Ridgeview Drive, McHenry. A memorial service is being planned for After the Fox, too, Shawn Summers said. “There will be a big crowd, so we have to figure out how to do this – fit everybody in and have everybody pay their respects.”