COVINGTON — To look at them, Covington lawyer Phil Taliaferro and his 35-year administrative assistant are an unlikely team.

        Colleagues say the 6-foot-4 litigator is a whirlwind of energy who creates chaos everywhere he goes.

Patti Dowling has been administrative assistant to Covington attorney Phil Taliaferro for 35 years, and they've been friends for 53. (Patrick Reddy photo) | ZOOM |

        Standing just over 5 feet in heels, Patti Dowling is said to be efficiency personified.

        The 64-year-old Erlanger native helps Mr. Taliaferro find everything from his glasses (on a chain around his neck) to his keys (at the car dealership where his car is waiting to be picked up).

        She also handles myriad other details for her boss — everything from the organization of gubernatorial campaigns to Boy Scout functions for thousands to all of the legal settlements for the law firm of Taliaferro, Mehling, Shirooni, Carran and Keys.

        Through two law practices, three wives and numerous high-profile cases, Mrs. Dowling has been the one constant in Mr. Taliaferro's personal and professional life, family and colleagues say on this Secretaries Day.

        “She's always there when you need her,” said Mr. Taliaferro, 64, as he struggled to sum up a personal and professional relationship that's spanned more than half a century. “That's a very rare quality — to have somebody who'll stick by you through thick and thin.”

        “I always say that he's unique, thank God,” Mrs. Dowling said.

        She quips that she might be considered crazy for attempting to keep up with the frenzied pace of her dedicated, but often absent-minded boss. Others who know the two say saintly is more like it.

        “Phil can be kind of crazy and off the wall, and you just have to be prepared at any moment for anything,” said paralegal Kirby Druffel. “Patti does more for Phil than most people probably realize. She's been here a long time, knows a lot of people and has good connections. She's also been a good friend to him.”

        “Phil's always hopping,” said Jenny McGinnis, who's been a secretary to him for 24 years. “Sometimes he's got two phones on his ear. When you're running a busy office, you can't do it all. You depend on the people around you to keep your calendar, keep things straight and tell you where you need to be.”

        Graduates of Lloyd High School's 32-member class of '55, Mr. Taliaferro and Mrs. Dowling have known each other for so long that each often understands the other through a look or gesture.

        “She knows what's a priority, what's not, what needs to be flashed in front of his face right now,” said Shelly Espich, who has worked as a project manager with Mr. Taliaferro on several cases.

        “It's kind of like an old married couple,” Ms. Espich said. “You just intuitively know what's needed.”

        “I credit Patti for keeping Phil alive until God could arrange for Phil and me to meet,” said Diana Taliaferro, who met her husband 16 years ago at an aerobics class in Covington.

        As someone “who's always out solving other people's problems on the front line,” Mrs. Taliaferro, 50, says her husband needs people around him who can help him handle the personal details in his life.

        Fifty-three years after meeting in the seventh grade at Lloyd High School, Mr. Taliaferro and the former Patti Afterkirk have always been there for one another, through personal crises and professional triumphs.

        When Mr. Taliaferro's father died, and his mother was fighting a battle with cancer, he marvels at how Mrs. Dowling stepped in and ran the Erlanger-based Taliaferro Funeral Home (now part of Middendorf-Bullock Funeral Homes).

        For Mrs. Dowling, her boss was there for her when her daughter, Beth, now 45, was critically injured in 1975.

        “He was on vacation with his family,” Mrs. Dowling said. “When he called the office to check in and heard that Beth had been in an accident, he could tell that I was upset,” she said.

        Mr. Taliaferro caught the first plane from Florida, and was at her daughter's bedside that night.

        For his part, he cites the dedication of an employee who put in a full workday on Good Friday in 1968, before calmly strolling into St. Elizabeth Medical Center North three hours later to deliver her third child.

        “I could have left work, but I was typing a brief that had to be done by Monday,” she said in a tone that implied she acted as any good employee would.

        Fifteen years later, a stubborn Mrs. Dowling — who has a near-spotless attendance record — refused to seek medical attention when she became seriously ill. In response, her boss ordered four law clerks to “carry her out and drive her to the doctor.”

        Mrs. Dowling has played a key role in a number of big cases for her boss. They include a $6 million verdict for a woman hurt in a car wreck, the acquittal of another woman in the shooting death of her husband after a lengthy trial, and a nationally publicized jury win for a Campbell County teacher threatened by a student.

        “She was the key link that held it all together,” her boss said.

        Although they attended their school's sophomore dance together, the two have always considered themselves close friends, rather than a couple.

        “I was always at his house, or he was always at mine,” Mrs. Dowling said of their teen years.

        They began their professional relationship in 1966, when Mr. Taliaferro was discharged from the Navy and began practicing law with the firm of Ware, Bryce, Nolan and West.

        “He called me one night and asked me to come in for a couple of days to help out,” Mrs. Dowling said.

        “There are a lot of people in need, a lot of people in crisis, and I can't always be there to help them,” Mr. Taliaferro said. “After 35 years, most people have learned that if I'm in a courtroom, they can turn to Patti instead of me. They know that Patti will handle it.”
       

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