John Boyer Surr

My grandfather, Vincent Edward Surr¹, had married Paula Krause, an Austrian, before he married Polly (Mary Boyer Surr).  Vincent's sister, Jenny, married Rudolph Krause, Paula’s brother.  After Paula died of breast cancer, Vincent sadly sent his first children to live with Jenny and Rudolph as Paula had asked.  Jenny and Rudolph had no children.  Rudolph was an engineer and lived in various places including Vienna, and London.  Grandpa loved and sorely missed his first set of children, Rudolph, Elsie, Bish and Meg. At the train that was to take the children to the east coast to their ship, Aunt Meg told me, he sadly told his children "When thy father and mother forsake you, then the Lord will take you up.".

Vincent, had many careers before he settled into practice of the law.  He took a job to help manage a hardware company in the Philippines and took his wife Polly and his daughter Mary with him.  Once he got to the Philippines, Vincent discovered that the hardware store was in financial difficulty.  My father, John Boyer Surr, was born in a shack made of nipa fronds in 1906; the family had not made it to the English doctor in Manila.  The Surrs recorded the birth in Manila.  Vincent and Polly had become American citizens; Polly was originally Canadian, Vincent, English.  A subsequent fire in Manila destroyed proof of John’s birth. Years later John acquired derivative citizenship by producing his mother in court to say that she had born him and finding and producing many papers.  In Part of my Life, Vincent writes that he swam once in Manila bay.  On that hot day he swam to a boat to rest in its shade.  Then he noticed that the shade was defined by many water snakes, some venomous.  He quickly swam back into the sun.

John’s younger sister, Nancy, was born on board the ship from Manila and Hong Kong.  It had just arrived in the port of Sausalito.

The family moved to San Francisco.  John toddled around the house energetically.  Vincent recounts coming home from work one evening to see John teetering on the second story windowsill.  John loved and was proud of his sisters.  As the only son in Grandpa's second family, he was the focus of the family.  His sisters may have minded living in his shade.  Grandpa clerked in a law office, studied to become a lawyer.  He achieved this goal, spurred on by his principal telling him “Surr, you’ll never be a lawyer.”  The family moved to Berkeley.

John was a bright child and a very poor student.  He enjoyed school nonetheless.  Even then, Berkeley was full of eccentric people.  John always enjoyed eccentrics.  He later told his children about a family who lived a house they called the Temple of the Winds, built after a Roman temple, with columns but no walls.  The family was vegetarian; their children took nuts and berries to school for their lunch.  The children traded these with the ham, beef and cheese sandwiches John and his friends brought.

In the fourth grade, John came down with Bright’s Disease, a kidney disease.  Doctors thought, at the time that walking made the disease worse. Grandpa carried John all over the hills around Berkeley on his back, discussing the life and geological history they found there.  He gave John a love of the wild that John passed down to his own children.  This love was one of the best parts of my inheritance from my father.  Polly, who had been a governess, taught John at home during the years he was sick.  Because of her teaching, John, who had been behind his classmates academically, came out ahead of them.  He graduated from Berkeley, then from its law school, Boalt Hall, in 1926 with a J.D.; he was only 20 years old.

John was a handsome young man who had a lively interest in his social life and in beautiful girls.  He told me that he had gone out with friends once, drank himself stupid, and staggered home to bed.  The next morning Polly woke him early.  Dad said that his head throbbed and his mouth tasted as if the Chinese army had marched through it. Grannie talked with him.  Polly told him of the great misery her own father had caused the Boyer family because he was alcoholic.  John took his mother’s story to heart, and though he sometimes drank for the rest of his life, he always drank moderately.  In the throes of my own drinking career, I remembered, amazed, that he would open a split of wine at dinner, pour a glass for Mother and himself then work the cork back into the bottle for the next night’s supper.

After law school, after a brief stint with an admiralty law firm in San Francisco, John got a job with his uncle, Howard Surr, a lawyer in San Bernardino, California.  He lived with Howard and Betty Surr and worked at Uncle Howard’s firm, Surr and Hellyer.  Howard, unsure that John could pull his own weight, paid John $75 a month out of his own pocket, and paid himself $75 a month for John's room and board.  He did this until his partners agreed that John was worth a salary from Surr and Hellyer.   San Bernardino had a wild-west flavor at the time.  Dad told of dodging spit aimed at a spittoon at the law library in his early days in San Bernardino.  Grandpa was an avowed Socialist.  Grannie was liberated before her time (she often wore her hair cropped short, she spoke her mind, and she smoked).  Dad enjoyed Howard’s more conservative stance.  Howard, I heard from other relatives, bordered on the stuffy.  Dad’s sense of humor always kept him from being stuffy.  All of Dad’s children grew up to be Democrats.  I asked Dad why he was a Republican.  He said that it was probably because his own father had been a Socialist.

John rode the streetcar to his uncle’s office.  He noticed an attractive young woman, Frances Stiles,² who rode the same streetcar every day.  Eventually their uncles, who were friends, introduced them at a cafeteria where all were eating Sunday brunch.  Their friendship blossomed.  John asked Frances to New Year’s dinner.  She declined; she had accepted her uncle’s family’s invitation.  Both families ended up at Arrowhead Springs Hotel for their dinner and dancing.  Dad commented on the beauty of Mother’s back on that occasion.

John married Frances in August 1931, during Prohibition.  Frances wore John’s sister Nancy’s wedding gown and veil.  The young couple’s honeymoon was a boat trip from California to Alaska and back.  They returned to a small house in San Bernardino.  Mother got a Scottie, Angus.

The young Surr family later bought a house on the wrong side of the tracks on Valencia Avenue.  This more spacious house was across the street from a farm and thus had a beautiful view of Mount Saint Gregonio and the other San Bernardino mountains.

Mother bore their first child,  Nancy,³ in June, 1934. Jack, the inventor, was born March 12, 1937, and I in 1939.  Polly waited five years and appeared on March 12 1944 to the delight of all of us.

Dad was witty and wielded his wit with kindness.  He loved puns.  His wit often transformed tense situations into friendly ones, and it always lightened the tone.

He was socially easy with everyone from the man pumping gas to the most august people.  I only once saw him misfire socially.  We drove across country to Wisconsin to see mother’s mother.  We were in a middle-west state; our breakfast diner held four farmers who debated a coming political election.  One of the men asked Dad his political party.  Dad had taught us that a few topics were rude to ask about – money, politics, and religion.  He felt it was none of their business, but said that he was a democratic republican.  One of the men replied “Around here we grow turkeys and we tolerate buzzards, but we shoot turkey buzzards.”  Dad rarely blushed; he did then.

Dad loved words and language.  At dinner, he would ask each person in turn about their day.  He’d argue about words and their usage, particularly with Nancy who loved to argue.  He’d then consult the huge dictionary on the sideboard to end the argument.  Sometimes after dinner we’d play Lexicon, a card game similar to scrabble.  The huge dictionary with its tissue paper pages was my ally in these games.  I often made up words, which my siblings always challenged.  My words usually turned up in the obsolete section of the book’s pages.  (The obsolete section sometimes took up half the page.)

Dad would recite or read anything he thought would interest his family.  His tastes were catholic – ranging from doggerel to the divine.  He quoted the Bible and Shakespeare, The Cremation of Sam McGee, the Gettysburg Address, Spartacus to the Gladiators, a family favorite about a first date that started ‘She said she wasn’t hungry but here is what she et . . .’ and ended after a long list of fancy foods, ‘. . . for I had but 50 cents.’  He had an apt quote for every occasion.  As he passed Mother’s plate with turkey, he’d say “Muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn.”  When I refused to eat peas it was “I eat my peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life.  It makes the peas taste funny, but it keeps them on the knife.”  When his children balked at setting the table, “It’s a proud ass that won’t carry its own provender.”  He’d quote John Muir and Yeats and Mark Twain and the Goop poems and the worst doggerel imaginable.  His children ate it up along with dinner.

I think that Dad was a spiritual seeker.  He said that he was an agnostic.  He read the bible every night before bed.  He loved biblical language.  He taught us, and listened nightly, to our Lord’s Prayers (with ‘trespasses’ – our California friends said ‘debts’).  He saw that a parent took us to Sunday school every Sunday.  He usually picked us up and often took us to Heywood’s home-made ice cream for cones after church.

Dad delighted to have half siblings.  They corresponded.  Dad’s half brother, was killed in action in WW I.  His half sisters, Elsie Simpson, Muriel Elliott (called Bish because when she was born she was red as a bishop), and Meg Wood survived WW II, Elsie and Bish in England, and Meg in Australia.  Dad first met his sister Bish at the end of the war.  She came to visit her father, Vincent in 1947 with her husband, Harold, and her two younger children, Ros and Gordon. Vincent never learned to drive, but he was a great back-seat driver; he was also nervous about meeting his daughter again.  Vincent demanded that Polly, who drove the car holding the Elliotts, overtake a truck on a blind stretch of hill;  she hit an oncoming car.  All were badly injured.  Ros remembered confusing the ambulance siren with air raid sirens from the war and screaming.

After they left the hospital, Dad brought the Elliott family south to stay with us for a while. I especially loved Uncle Harold, who would sit with me and help when I was trying to play Fleecy Clouds or some other hard piece on the piano.  After helping with my ‘music’, Uncle Harold would then play real music with great skill and pleasure. 

Dad persuaded Bish and Harold to leave Ros and Gordon with us for months.  A great joy of my childhood was having these kind cousins live with us.  Dad found Ros and Gordon jobs while they were with us.  They entertained us, ate with us, went on trips with us and we thought of them as older siblings.  Ros was very bright, very quiet, and often witty.  Gordon was a great storyteller.  His stories were always funny and beautifully structured.  He taught us to change gears in the car and helped us pretend that we were driving.  When these cousins left us at the end of their year, we sorely missed them.

Dad loved the San Bernardino Mountains.  He spent much of his time there, hiking, skiing, and picnicking with family and friends.  Because he skied before it was an American sport, he met and became great friends with a group of European skiers, who eventually called themselves the Edelweissers.  Walter Lier was French Swiss, an engineer.  Walter slipped from English to French and back again in every sentence.  He was excitable, opinionated, and when understood, very funny. Johnny Elvrum was Norwegian, and had been an Olympic Ski Jumper; he founded Snow Valley, starting with a rope tow and a tiny shack where he sold snacks.  Robert Wade was a doctor who had to be the first to reach the top.  His wife Izzy was Canadian and one of the warmest, most welcoming adults I ever knew.  Their children included Ruthie, my age, with whom I once invented a disgusting cake recipe made of baked jello and salt.  Jean Jacques Wiegle was a physicist and molecular biologist at Cal Tech.  Jean Jacques spent time playing with and enjoying one of Jack’s puzzles when Jack was in his magician phase.  Harry Leuthold lived in the mountains in Blue Jay and ran the skating rink there.  Every Christmas eve he'd bring us a little Christmas tree he'd cut.  It always smelled wonderful.  Joe Vanier, Eddie Yahn,who ran boat yard at Lake Arrowhead, and the Eatons were Edelweissers. Dad said that Eaton invented the Eaton turntable.  Ingolf Dahl, a composer, sometimes skied with the Edelweissers.  Dad kept these friends close all his life.

In the early days in California ski lifts and tows were rare.  The skiers climbed steep mountains with seal skins strapped to the bottoms of their skies.  The fur had directional bristles that allowed the skier to ski uphill without backsliding.  Skiing was greater exercise in those days, rewarded with wind in the face on the downhill side.  The Edelweissers built a shelter up on Greyback Mountain above the tree line.  They carried up all the materials to build the hut, along with heavy parts to a wood stove.  The group planned a sleepover to celebrate the hut’s completion. Each person brought warm sleeping bags, wood and food.  They discovered after they assembled for dinner that no one had brought matches.  They huddled together in sleeping bags for a cold and happy night.  The hut was helpful to people stranded on the mountain for all the years of my childhood.

My Dad’s love of the mountains led him to care for the environment before people knew it existed.  He and mother joined the Sierra Club, yet made fun of the earnest Sierra Clubbers.  When we went on hikes and family picnics, he’d pick up any trash he found along the path and encourage us to do the same...When his children were tired and started to whine “Is it far?”, Dad would put a hand on the child”s back, say “just around the next corner”, and give a gentle assist upwards.  Once they were hardened off dad took the older two of his four children to the hut several times.

Before WW II my parents had bought a piece of land on Sunset Drive in Redlands, California, intending to build a house there.  It had a fine view of the mountains and the valley.  Every year, after World War II ended, Dad said that construction costs must go down; every year they went up.  The parents realized in 1949 that construction costs weren’t in a hurry to drop, and built their house anyway.  An architect friend designed it.  Dad was unhappy with the mullioned windows in the architect’s drawing and requested plain windows.  He got annoyed with details of the house that Mother just accepted; his vision of his house was specific.  We moved in 1950 only after the lawn was established.  Mother wasn’t eager to have her four children track red mud through the new house.  The living room was long and proportionately narrow.  Mother installed a big framed mirror on the wide side to give an illusion of more space.  Dad bumped his head on its frame every time he sat on the sofa.  After words, the furniture was rearranged and the mirror lost its frame.  On the side to the north a picture window took up much of the wall.  When the furniture and dust settled, Dad loved looking at the view.  I never saw him as irritable as he was just before we settled in to the new house.

Dad specialized in water rights law.  His work in water rights fed his interest in geology, climate, and other matters of science.  He did a fair amount of work on his own on environmental protection.

Ded worked in San Bernardino, Los Angeles, and Sacramento.  Our trip to Sacramento is a favorite childhood memory .  Mother and Dad each made a point of taking one child at a time on excursions with them.  Dad was a wonderful guide as we drove along.  When he got to where he was going, he parked me in somebody’s law library while he worked.  I was always happy in law libraries as long as I had plenty of paper and a pen or pencil.  The ride home was as beautiful as the ride up.

Dad lunched often in San Bernardino's Harris Company. That department store's dining room had a lawyer’s table.  Lawyers at the table argued, told stories, and laughed.  The oldest waitress at the dining room served them and knew their preferences.  One of the lawyers was a bachelor, a skinny, short, old man named Baldwin, called “Lucky” by his table mates.  The other lawyers carried him legally.  Dad said to Mother that he asked questions at the lawyer’s table that a first year law student could answer.  When Mr Baldwin phoned at dinnertime it was always to ask an elementary legal question.

We usually had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners with mother’s cousin, Pauline Stiles, dad’s uncle and aunt, Howard and Betty Surr (after Howard died, just Aunt Betty and later her sister Aunt Em).  One year, Mother, feeling sorry for Mr. Baldwin, invited him into this mix.  He dominated the conversation, talking of how he had an eagle’s eye, he could see miles, how he’d come to California from Connecticut to cure his asthma – he’d been at death’s door.  When Mother asked him if he would like seconds, he patted him little round tummy and said, “Oh no, Frances, I’ve got three more Thanksgiving dinners to go to today."

Dad loved to putter around the house and fix things.  He often invited me to hold the flashlight while he fixed plumbing and other projects.  The problem-solving aspect of fixing things appealed to him.

After their children left home the parents bought a run-down cabin in the mountains, in Camp Angeles, near good friends.  Together they made it into a comfortable weekend retreat.  I still picture Dad, wearing a battered straw cowboy hat, whistling Cheery, Beery Bee or Lavender’s Blue, Dillly Dilly as he installed an indoor/outdoor thermometer, or attached a door knob, or leveled cabinets at the cabin. .Mother floored the place with a checkerboard of self-stick squares.

In Redlands, Mother turned Jack’s old room into a studio after he left.  She installed a potter’s wheel and made masses of pots.  She progressed to maquettes and thence to sculpture in a studio at the University of Redlands.  Dad remembered walking with Mother from that studio.  He carried her large plaster nude around its waist, with its breasts pointed outward.  They encountered the shocked Board of Trustees of the Baptist University on their path to the car.

Dad climbed Rainbow Bridge in Utah with friends.  Ox and I lived in London at the time.  He wrote that when he looked down he was so scared it almost killed him.  I thought he was joking; his next doctor visit showed that he’d had his first heart attack.  Dad changed to a low cholesterol diet then, eating what he called ‘better butter’.  He gave up his favorite after-work snack, cheese and knackebrot.  He continued to exercise.  His doctor advised him to stay below 5,000 feet elevation.  He was unable to do that.  He loved the mountains and the cabin was above that elevation.

Late in his career, Dad was elected a bar examiner of the California Bar, and in 1969 was elected to the Board of Governors of the California Bar Association.  On the rare occasions I had dinner with the Bar Examiners and their wives, I saw a very clever and happy bunch of people.  Dad enjoyed their company hugely.

In October of 1971, Dad hiked with two friends from the cabin toward a spot Dad had discovered and loved.  His friends affectionately called it John’s Meadow.  John’s Meadow was a small glen around a small stream, surrounded with aspen trees.  (The Park Service later officially named it John’s Meadow.)  Three hours into their walk, Dad sat down on the earth, said “Oh!”, then lay down.  One friend gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation, while the other ran down to Camp Angeles for help.  The rescue helicopter was occupied and did not reach him while he was alive.  At 64, he died much too young.  Though he would have hated imposing on his friends, he died as he would have liked to – in the mountains with friends.

After Dad died the San Bernardino Bar Association set up the John B. Surr award.  It says “Given in Memory of John B. Surr, 1906-1971 Distinguished Lawyer, Respected Citizen, Devoted Conservationist   Admired by All Who Knew Him   Awarded to the Member of the Legal Community Who has Best Exemplified the High Standards of the Profession and the Administration of Justice”

I often think what a wonderful childhood my parents gave their children.

Blog posts  - all in 1914
¹ Edward Vincent Surr - March 13
² Frances Stiles Surr - May 27 
³ Nancy Elizabeth Hoffsdyk Loy Cameron - July 10