MARCH 18, 2011 : ST. LOUIS, MO.
KAYAK AT THE CONFLUENCE: A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE HITCHCOCK

3/21/2001

I'm so sad.

So many good and briliant people and so little time to get to know you.
Reading your brief bios after meeting you makes me wish I had had much more time.
What a wonderful event. Thanks so much to you all for coming, and to wonderful Liz for magically putting it all together. Although magic implies effortlessness, which certainly was not the case.
Thank you all for presenting me with greater insight into the nature of the phenomenon which was my father.
I'm sorry his grandchildren, Bryan and Amy, and great-grandson Samuel, were not able to attend. I'm sure they would appreciate greatly your efforts. I hope you will all continue to contribute your worthy observations for all our benefits.
And thanks to Vagadu and Jouie for their presentation of the Varda portfolios. Our fathers were very dear friends, and it's a genuine pleasure in my life to reconnect with you both.
You've all contributed so much, so thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Yours in every way,
Stephen
stephen@surrenderworks.com

To all George's friends

                                                                                                          

George Hitchcock and other area poets outside Cooperhouse, Santa Cruz, CA

The windows, left to right:   Steve Levine, Victor Perera, James B. Hall, T. Mike Walker, 
Peter Beagle, Robert Lundquist, Morton Marcus, Anne Steinhardt, James D. Houston. 
Standing from left:  William Everson, Mason Smith; 
Seated from left:   John Deck, Lou Matthews, Nels Hanson, George Hitchcock.

Photo by Gary Griggs

Many thanks to you all for your comfort to Marjorie and your friendship to my father.  

I remember as a teenager the wonderful summers I was privileged to spend with him during the production of his plays with Interplayers and Marine Memorial. Enjoying the celebrity of being his son and getting to go backstage after performances; hanging out after the show at that bagel shop down the street. What a life he led. He was the admiration of us all.

He was a very close friend of Jean Yanko Varda. One of my fondest childhood memories is the summer sailing with Varda (I called Him 'Uncle Bart') off the back end of the Vallejo where he lived opposite Alan Watts. I remember that beautiful Latine rig Greek style fishing boat with the huge sun on the sail, that he would fill up with bohemian types and other friends and plenty of food, wine and cheese, and sail gloriously around the bay on Sundays. I was fortunate enough to get to spend a few weeks with him during various summer vacations. I prayed for him when I learned of his passing and never go through Sausalito with paying a visit to the Vallejo.

Such wonderful experiences, thanks to my father. Whatever I have from him, I love. And whatever I've missed from Him, I love too.

His mother, too, my grandmother, was also quite a lady and local figure, docking her ketch - the Makai - in Sausalito harbor for many long years.

I'm sure that some of you already have given thought - and maybe more - to a memorial website and I encourage all efforts in this direction. To store some memories for myself I've started this blog which I invite you all to contribute to. It's simple as I'm not too sophisticated in this craft, but it might suffice for a beginning.

I'm sure I'll be writing more as the time passes, but at the moment I'm just gathering thought and digesting.

again my thanks, deepest regards and condolences for our great loss.
Sincerely
Stephen

In Loving Memory

George Hitchcock, 1987 - Santa Cruz Home,
SC Sentinel

in his Santa Cruz print shop: 1972;
Credit: Jim Hair

George Hitchcock, surrealist poet,
playwright and maverick publisher,
at his Oregon home.
Credit: Jeff Barnard /2004

I'm attaching my favorite photo of Jorge....
we were younger but notice the gleam of a young man in his eyes.
Judy Ristity