Courtship and Marriage

It was at the Ferguson office in San Francisco in fall 1981 where Alan and I met at the elevator when I arrived for a job interview.  Alan would later recount:  “We met in an elevator and have gone up ever since.”  I began learning about his previous presses in Cleveland.  He and I had discussions on who deserved to be “The Boss":  Springsteen or Pavarotti.  We attended a few operas, and saw many concerts.  My knowledge of rock groups was lacking.  I had grown up with the British invasion and the Beach Boys, but in college, I listened to Percy Faith strings, Sergio Mendez, opera and pop music.  I knew this man who I met was caring, trustworthy, genuine, smart, honest, unique, handsome with those beautiful brown eyes, and made me laugh. 

We each had our own apartment, mine in North Beach where it was freezing in the winter with the incessant dripping of a downspout.  His apartment was in Pacific Heights, close to the Presidio and across the street from then Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s house.  Alan would say: “marriage after 30”, and we were married on May 9, 1986 when I was 35 and he 33 in Stern Grove, a beautiful area of redwoods in the southwest part of San Francisco.  The building onsite was in need of repair, but it was a beautiful spot and May 9th was a beautiful spring day.  He and his best man posted signs in the area which read “This is where the road leads.”  We first lived in Daly City, a suburb of San Francisco and walked up that long hill over Interstate 280 to the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station for the 15-minute ride downtown to work.  We enjoyed that area with its fog that rolled in from the ocean.  A year later we bought our first home, ½ of a duplex in Fremont, on the east side of the Bay.  The hills were golden and it was at least 10-20 degrees warmer than the City.  We bought there, primarily, since the price of a home was less but with a longer commute into the City for work.

We did some silly (in a good way) things such as posing for the following picture.  Alan obtained the bunting in the background from the Democratic National Convention held in Cleveland in 1976.   In a video tape Alan shot named Word working Made Easy, we were videotaping an existing bookshelf my father made so that he could make a duplicate and then interspersed some commercials.  These commercials included the character Babbette with a beret and French accent, riding a stationary bike through Europe, a commercial for run-proof hose applying black paint to my legs, and an ad for “helping hands” which were plaster of Paris hands, modeled after Alan’s hands, used to help wash the dishes.  We also taped the house when it was on the market.  Saying that many important guests came to visit, I got up from the chair to show that the chair had Margaret Thatcher’s name on it – and we included a scene with me scurrying into the bedroom, closing the door with a sign posted “President’s Meeting in Progress” – as I yelled “Oh, Bill!”   In spring 1990, we decided to have a child.  I became pregnant a couple times, but since I was 40, things didn’t work out and we decided that it was okay not to have any children. 

Nature

During his years in Cleveland, Alan and his friends enjoyed Cleveland’s park system, including the “emerald necklace” which encircles most of the metro area.  Even though San Francisco is a beautiful city, it doesn’t have a park system comparable to Cleveland’s, both in area and with those brilliant red, orange and yellow fall colors.  Alan returned for visits to Cleveland in the fall to enjoy the colors and milder temperatures. 

When we lived in Fremont along the “golden” east bay hills, we enjoyed driving east through Niles Canyon to one of our favorite picnic spots, Sonol.  In the 80s we enjoyed camping, but for the last 20 years or so, we only used our Coleman stove for breakfast cookouts.  After moving to Vancouver, we enjoyed driving the back roads curious where it would lead us.  Driving through the Columbia Gorge took us eastward to the fish ladder at the Bonneville Dam to watch the salmon and steelhead, swimming upstream to spawn, through the viewing windows.

Kirpan Press

With the urging of Dave Pishnery in the mid 1990s, Alan resumed publishing under his final press, Kirpan Press.  Alan wrote that a Kirpan is a Sikh ornamental dagger which represents that a person should be equal parts “soldier” as well as “saint” – attaining a balance within the soul.  Since he had started to reprint d.a. levy, on our visits to Cleveland, we sought out levy works spending a number of hours looking through levy collections at Cleveland Public Library and Kent State’s special archives.

While in the Cleveland area, he participated in poetry readings.  Alan discretely placed some books at the Mac’s Back’s bookstore, but when we returned the following day they were gone (probably pulled off the shelves).  Alan wasn’t looking to get any money, just to get the books out there.

Dave Pishnery visited Alan in the winter of 1997 in Vancouver when, after camping and a trip to the coast, they read some new poems (photo below).  Over the next year, this led to their collaboration on their book, Surfacing.  Dave came out in December 1998 and helped Alan collate and bind the book. 

Ingrid Swanberg gave Kent Taylor’s name to Alan; Alan and Kent met, began a friendship and collaborated on indexing levy’s works in the 2-volume Looking for d.a. levy – The d.a. levy Bibliography.

2007 was a very sad year for Alan.  Besides his health issues, Alan’s mother Dorothy, his aunt Elsie, his childhood friend Mike Puflea and my mother died.  This was the inspiration for his broadside Counting Them Down, the precursor to his broadside series Stories From “The Flats”, many of which were produced in collaboration with Tom Kryss/Black Rabbit Press.  The last 4 unpublished broadsides Alan had planned to publish will be issued in memoriam. 

You can read more about Kirpan Press at Kirpan Press Through My Eyes.

Disability, and The End

I remember the day, in 2006, Alan called me from work telling me he couldn’t focus on his monitor.  That was the start of the next phase of his life, disability, not being able to see due to, we learned, a transient ischemic attack of vessels hemorrhaging in his eyes.  His kidney function slowly declined, and renal failure prevented him from returning to work.  He knew way too much about his diseases:  diabetes, renal failure, sleep apnea, neuropathy...  Over the years, Alan endured several surgeries – vitrectomy in his eyes followed up with multiple painful laser treatments to cauterize bleeding vessels, and fistula surgeries in 2007, 2008, 2010.  He staved off dialysis for as long as he could by adhering to a strict diet of low potassium and phosphorous foods.  Eventually, his blood levels grew very toxic, and he started dialysis.  They were dialyzing fluids and toxins out of his blood and he was hopeful that he’d be feeling better in 3 months or so.  Then on September 14, 2010, Alan died of cardiac arrest.  We thought this event might happen in about 10 years. 

The day after Alan passed away my father, Bob, and sister, Ann, came up and spent a few days with me.  Alan’s ashes were laid to rest at Evergreen Memorial Gardens here in Vancouver, a very quiet and peaceful cemetery.  I invited Dale and Wanda Timmons to a small memorial service where we read some of his poems and played some music he enjoyed.   We have known Dale and Wanda since the 80s when we lived in Fremont and Dale was a coworker at PGT.

Alan would have enjoyed seeing the 2010 fall leaves and the San Francisco Giants win the World Series last fall.  He never would learn the cause of the September Bay Area natural gas line explosion which he excitedly discussed with Kent Taylor a few days prior to his death.

As many people have recalled, Alan was an interesting person to talk with; and one of his previous carpool riders said “When Alan spoke it was always something worth listening to.”

Previous Section: Work, Poetry and Music

Back to main page