Go in beauty

I was glad to see my friend and colleague George Snyder go out in style last week. His memorial in Occidental last Saturday drew a mob of his friends and family who packed St. Philip the Apostle Church as everyone knew they would.
The crowd of old faces comprised a who’s who of West County political and environmental activists, artists, writers and maybe even a few normal people.
 Bill Wheeler wore a tie, if you want to get an idea of what a remarkable display of respect and affection this occasion drew from those who knew George.
The old gang was there, now vaguely familiar faces such as Dee Swanhuyser, Mary Moore, Lynn Hamilton and Salli Raspberry,  as well as the younger — including George’s grown-up sons looking as handsome as movie idols as they told candid and droll stories about their father’s propensities such as his uncanny ability to use almost any pretext as an opportunity to go fishing.
It was a multi-generational mob of romantics paying our respects to a remarkable man who lived well and died too young at age 68.
“George lived a good life,” said Nick Gravenites, the Occidental musician who began the memorial by singing “Get Together,” the Dino Valente song made famous by Jesse Colin Young  in 1969 when many of those at George’s memorial were running around San Francisco in various states of wild abandon. We knew we were lucky to still be around.
George’s brother Edd Snyder delivered a hilarious monologue about George growing up in Michigan and reinventing himself every so often as some improbable American archtype from Beat poet to golfer before eventually morphing into the George most of us knew, a tall black guy in a cowboy hat, a good writer who loved the outdoors and never tired of talking about the respect for nature to be gleaned from native Americana.
A pair of George’s cowboy boots and his black cowboy hat adorned the memorial display in the church and I remembered that when I started spending time a few years ago in the high desert of southeastern Utah, next to the Navajo Indian Reservation, I thought ‘Gee, a lot of these guys dress just like George Snyder.’ They were dark-skinned native Americans wearing cowboy boots, jeans, silver belt buckles, long-sleeved work shirts, bolo ties and cowboy boots. They owned horses, drove pickup trucks and hunted game, not for sport but as a tribal ritual involving prayers and sacred observances.
George said he always prayed before he shot something, gave an offering of respect and gratitude for the sustenance he expected to receive from the soon-to-be-departed. I’m not a hunter, but I thought it was probably a good policy.
Former 5th District Sonoma County Supervisor, who took office when George was a San Francisco Chronicle reporter commuting to the City from Occidental, recalled first meeting George and thinking, “How unusual, an African American cowboy reporter with an environmental bent.”
George was “a West County guy,” said Carpenter, not a “drawstring West County guy,” but a bold, big-hearted outdoorsman and story teller with a “cat-ate-the-canary smile.”
Certainly no one I know ever conveyed a better sense of what Sonoma County is all about than George Snyder.
The day after George’s memorial I attended another remarkable celebration, a birthday party in the city for another friend, Charles Campbell, who turned 98. Charlie’s party was in North Beach at Bimbo’s, the old San Francisco nightclub with dim lighting and walls adorned with paintings of naked women. I watched Charlie and decked-out old San Francisco dames holding hands and dancing to Leon Oakley’s band playing the traditional American jazz that Charlie loved.
“I hope I’m back here in two years and still dancing,” said Charlie. I do to.
But we’re starting to go, I was thinking, looking over the crowds of well-wishers at both occasions. Our time has come.
Go in beauty, as the Navajos say.   
Frank Robertson is a columnist with the Healdsburg Tribune’s sister publication, the Sonoma West Times & News.