George Stuart Nixon II 1916-2007

Dad wore a lot of hats, and he presented himself to different people in many different ways. He had been a warrior, a historian, a newspaper man, a club man, a self made man, a friend to a wide ranging, always fascinating group of characters, and even a few scoundrels. His obituary couldn’t cover half of what he accomplished in his life. But as I heard from many of his friends after the news of his death appeared, a common theme was how people had loved to listen to him tell his stories. I think the way that I will remember him best is as a story teller.

He started telling stories as a child. In elementary school he wrote and illustrated a complete history of an imagined country called Pozzia. In middle school he and a friend took turns writing and illustrating a comic strip chronicling the impossible and blood thirsty, but always well mannered, struggles of Hercule Poirot, (the good guy) and his arch enemy Aloysious O’Hare. Their hilarious and hair raising exploits kept my brothers and me in awe as we poured over them. There’s not much in today’s graphic novels that can beat this.

Dad was an energetic storyteller. There were always strange noises and theatrics and bursts of absurd songs in English or French or what he claimed was Russian. At Halloween he would put a lighted jack o lantern on the table and captivate us with the tale of the Brom Bones and the Headless Horseman. Sometimes the stories ended with a punch line. My kids almost fell out of their seats at the movies when they heard the punch line to one of his stories about “the lesser of two weevils” repeated by Russell Crowe in Master and Commander.

On Sunday mornings as a kid I remember all of us climbing onto their bed and listening to the story of Peter Rabbit and Mr. MacGregor’s garden. The moral of the story was twofold: 1. Take responsibility and follow the rules or be prepared to face the consequences. 2. If you were lucky enough to escape, count your blessings and learn from your mistakes. As we grew older we didn’t hear these stories for awhile -- until he became a grandfather. But then there was one difference. For his grandsons he did Peter Rabbit in French and added some French songs about the girls in Tahiti. My French isn’t good enough to tell if there was still a moral to that story.

There were lots stories of San Francisco in the twenties and thirties. He lived a lot of history, and he knew a lot of the people that made the history of his era. He told about speakeasies and waterfront strikes and his grandfather’s cook who boiled the funny papers to make coloring for ice cream.

He had studied California history. Whenever we traveled, which was often, he would show us points of interest and give us a little set piece that went with it. Black Bart used to hide behind that rock to stop the stage coaches. There was the ranch where his friends the Howards trained (and eventually buried) the famous racehorse Seabiscuit. The railroad workers called that cliff Cape Horn because it was so dangerous. They would lower Chinese laborers on ropes from it so they could blast rock to build the transcontinental railroad.

The most famous and enduring story of all was about how his grandfather had been held up and locked in his own bank vault by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The Wild Bunch later sent a group portrait as a sort of twisted thank you note.

By adolesence we knew where the stories would start and we could have told them ourselves, but we would roll our eyes and listen again. And new sets of ears would always come along and find the stories fresh and interesting. Now I do the same thing myself, and my kids groan when they hear them at this point. They too can tell the stories themselves. And I think that is part of the point.

Dad didn’t talk much about World War II to his kids, except for some of the more light hearted non-combat events. We heard a lot about Australia and the smokes and the Sheilas, but not very much about Guadalcanal.

Dad’s ability to tell an interesting story made him a natural newspaperman, and he accumulated a lot of stories about the seamier side of life that were fascinating to hear late at night on a camp out. As a PR man, and a travel writer, he was able to make his living telling stories, and he could always find the right story to keep a conversation moving along.

He knew fascinating people, some of whom we met, some who we only knew by stories. We heard stories about people escaping Russia after the revolution in incredible ways, French resistance fighters who had helped our own relatives, people who would grow up to rule countries, people who had tremendous influence in the arts, literature, sports, politics.

He loved to hold court at the dinner table, and was always at his best when he was surrounded with friends, drinking a little wine and carrying on a lively conversation. For our teenage friends to be considered worthy friends, they had to be able to hold their own in the conversation. He treated them as regular people, drawing them out, never talking down, listening to what they had to say, and treating their remarks with respect, and getting some unexpected results. There were not many homes then where the dinner table conversations were as lively as they could be when Dad was holding forth. There are even less today.

He used to tell a lot of stories about how he met and courted my mother, but my favorite went like this. “In 1946 she met the dashing Marine Corps Captain, Stuart Nixon, at a San Francisco Opera Company performance of Boris Gudonov. ‘I was dazzled’ he said. ‘She was a beautiful woman, she looked like a goddess to me. Four months later we were married.’”

At the end there were not very many stories, but there were still some. In one of my last visits to him he was watching the PBS series on World War II, chronicling the battle of Pelilu where he had fought. It was an effort for him, but he couldn’t help adding his own color commentary based on his own experience.

There is a lot I will miss about my Dad, but mostly I will miss his stories. They were by turns purposeful, instructive, mind expanding, entertaining, romantic and funny. Just like him.