by Penny Wells
Rich Warren, a member of BASK from very early in our history, died November 12th. He went the way I think we'd all like to go - with a busy day planned, he sat down on his back deck for a minute to read a thank you note and whammy, it was all over.
Family and friends met at Ayala Cove on Angel Island on Sunday, November 21st, to share rememberances and swap "Rich" stories. Non-kayakers came by ferry and kayakers paddled in from Sausalito, Corte Madera and Tiburon. There were people there who knew each other through Rich but only met face to face for the first time at this memorial thus creating a beginning from an ending.
Joe Petolino, Gino Thomas and Khosrow Khalighi escorted Rich's son Eric as he paddled his father's favorite kayak (the beautiful red Solstice that Rich kept on the mantle in his living room) to scatter his ashes in Raccoon Strait. The assemblage of family and friends who lined the shore chanted the paddlers out into the strait for their final farewell.
Fred Gillam carved a miniature replica of the Solstice to also carry Rich's ashes to the open sea and Gino escorted this funerary kayak to the Golden Gate where the 5+ knot ebb tide swept Rich on to his next adventure. As funerals go, this one was very cool and I'm sure Rich would've loved it - in fact I'm sure he did.
Rich was remembered by fellow paddlers for quite a few things. He was the soft spoken man who always wore his glasses perched on the top of his forehead that always came down with a cold or the flu if the weather looked marginal on paddling days. He's the same man that went to Chile with Reg Lake and paddled 120 miles in 6 days through ice floes and 30 knot winds right after finishing chemotherapy for prostate cancer. He's also the same man that went to Chile on the Rick Klein expedition searching for endangered Alerce trees and managed to climb to the top of an active volcano with a cracked rib that he got while rafting the BioBio. He was not into the soft cushy creature comforts that many of us like - his friends are still talking about the menu of dehydrated yams and cuttle fish that he foisted onto them while kayaking the northwest coast of Vancouver Island.
He loved music and spearheaded a number of evenings where BASKers who paddled in Chile met at La Pena in Berkeley for Chilean food and music. An opera buff, he sometimes could be spotted at the opera in San Francisco in the evening after beeing spotted paddling on the Bay during the day. Likewise, he rarely missed the BASK trips to the Mendocino Music Festival because of the pleasure of kayaking all day, and listening to good music at night.
Yup, Rich got out and did all the things he liked to do and that he cared about. And that's what we should do too.
Text copyright © 1999 by Penny Wells
On to next article