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.
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
