Oscar Thom Lawler; Led Chamber of Commerce

Oscar Thom (Pat) Lawler, retired vice chairman and chief financial officer of Security Pacific National Bank and a former president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, has died. He was 78.

Lawler died Thursday at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan of cancer, his son, Charles Frederick Lawler of Chico, said Monday.

The late financial executive was elected president of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in 1964, and during his tenure stressed regional development, rather than programs limited to the city.

“Virtually every matter with which we deal is regional in nature,” he told The Times in 1964. “Water problems don’t stop with the Los Angeles city limits, and neither does the smog problem, for example.”

Lawler later served on former Mayor Tom Bradley’s Economic Development Board.

The civic leader was elected president of the Los Angles Civic Light Opera Assn. in 1971, and served on its board for many years.

He also was president of the Hollenback Home for the Aged, chairman of Barlow Sanatorium Assn., a trustee of Union Pacific Foundation, director of Associated In-Group Donors, and a trustee and major fund-raiser for Claremont Men’s Colleges.

Lawler served as president of Farmers & Merchants National Bank of Los Angeles from 1953 until 1956, when it merged into Security Pacific. He served as a director of Union Pacific Railroad and Brunswig Drug Co.

Lawler’s first wife, the former Joan Pattinson, whom he married in 1937, died in 1984. In addition to his son, Lawler is survived by his wife, Alice, of Los Angeles; his daughter, Joan Lawler Whitesell, of Dallas, and four grandchildren.

A memorial service is scheduled at 11 a.m. Wednesday in St. James Episcopal Church, 3875 Wilshire Blvd.

Memorial donations may be made to the Daniel Murphy Foundation, 800 W. 6th St., Suite 1240, Los Angeles, Calif. 90017, or to the American Heart Assn.