Chris Saunders: the hero next door: a remembrance and a revisit

I wrote this appreciation to Chris Saunders last year. Tomorrow, the 21st of September, will mark the day we lost Chris. Before he passed, I spent many hours with him talking baseball, politics, but the most special discussion was his demand that I tell him the complete plot to my new novel Meet Me at Moonlight Beach. He loved writing and was a wonderful wizard with words. Chris insisted on introducing me to his friends as "the author, Bob Pacilio." I wish he could have wrapped his fingers around the novel that he listened to in his hospital bed. The novel is dedicated to him.

For thirty two years, I taught about fictional heroes, but for the last three years a real hero lived next door. My neighbor Chris Saunders passed away on September 21, 2017, and yesterday hundreds of folks came to honor him and his family. It was gut wrenching. It was inspiring. It was courageous. It was nostalgic. But above all, it communicated one simple truth. Chris was a hero.

To the thousands of students I taught, you may remember Chris as a channel 8 news reporter for twenty years. Perhaps these pictures will sharpen that recollection of him.  I am writing this for you and for all those folks out there in the ‘cloud’ who may not know that a person like Chris Saunders can bring out the hero in YOU.

I will not make an attempt to equal the eloquence of those who spoke of him. No one could bear witness to Chris’s heroics more than his daughters; Juliet and Hillary. Theirs was a bedtime story told of a father who transcended what is usually expected of fatherhood. One knows deep in our souls that a child’s most important teachers are parents, and the greatest of those parents make it their sacred duty to have their children evolve to a higher level of consciousness and spirituality than they have. That was a tall order for these young women, but Juliet’s and Hillary’s words spoke volumes of what Chris taught them.

Chris was never alone in this endeavor. Courage takes on many forms, but his wife of forty years, Marsha, embodied exactly that courage as she faced the cancer that took her soulmate’s life. The Celebration of His Life was her tribute to a man who promised to always and forever walk with her, hand in hand.

He loved the truth and he told the truth in every endeavor. Those of us who knew him, even briefly, heard the stories of his reporting with the Innocence Project, and the people he helped get out of the prison. Prejudice and ignorance were often the causes; however, he spoke truth to power. More importantly, he lived his truth. When Chris Saunders said he would do something, he did it to the best of his abilities.

Chris loved music. He could play any guitar and in the

words of Bruce Springsteen “make it talk.”

He always made us laugh…even when his pain was unendurable.

Today, I ask each of us to continue to follow his lead: listen, be kind, sing your song, stand up for what is right because it is right, read to your children, and love family unconditionally. Nothing would make Chris happier. And that, my friends, is what heroes do. Even when the chips are down, they never stop believing in YOU.

So yesterday “there were teardrops on the city”—today, we try to make a difference.

Imagine that.

The Moshers: Jack and Karen: The Autumn of Their Lives.

I write this message to the thousands of people that Jack and Karen Mosher touched in the 80 years that they moved from season to season. I am embarrassed because I planned on writing it in the summer, but no excuse will suffice.

We lost them both in a blink of an eye. Firs

t, Karen’s unexpected death in her sleep, then Jack’s in similar fashion weeks later. The memorial was held after Karen’s death in Palm Desert. I do not know if there will be another for Jack. Knowing Jack, he wouldn’t want a big fuss over him, but he always took great joy in celebrating Karen and the gifts she brought to his life and his children’s lives.

I met Jack in the teacher’s workroom at Mt. Carmel High. He looked like Earnest Hemingway and he sounded like him. The more I had coffee or played golf with Jack, the more I realized what a full life he lived. He wasn’t much of a phone talker, but he’s the only person I ever knew who answered my calls with a chipper, “Well, hello there, Bobby.” I always called him “Chief.” Just walking the golf course with the Chief was a lesson in loyalty, honesty, goodwill, and love.

Karen was his angel. She was the piano teacher to so many children who tried their best for her. My wife Pam and I watched both our children play and sing, Anna did most of the singing and Nicholas did most of the playing. Karen’s patience and generosity was a testament to that word again: love

They fell for each other when they themselves were mere teenagers and their affect never wavered through the tumultuous decades that followed: Vietnam, civil rights, the sexual revolution and the technological advances to come. What always amazed me was that they were always on the right side of history, and as the times changed, they grew and adapted—embracing new ideas, new skills.

Many of you reading this had “Mr. Mosher” as your teacher or your European tour guide or your coach on an Academic team, etc. For me, he was always one of my mentors, but despite never taking a class from him, I learned so much. He knew I didn’t know Picasso from Pacino; Carl Jung from Neil  Young; from Walt Whitman from a Whitman’s Sampler—but Jack, who knew so much, did not parade his worldliness. He would wink at me when he knew that I had finally gotten it.

After Karen’s death, I called. I got a very subdued, “Hello,… Bobby.” Then he said, “You know, I was always the one who was supposed to go first.” I was not sure what to say, even though that is what most everyone thought, but I never expected death to catch up with them so soon.  I said I hoped to see more of him since his family was nearby in Carlsbad. However, he solemnly replied, “I don’t think so.” It was foreshadowing, and he knew it. Those words were his last to me.

He and the love of his life Karen now rest in a better place…together. And piano plays an Irish jig.

God Bless them both.

 Bob Pacilio and all of us who had the great pleasure to be a part of the Mosher’s Café.