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Hail and Farewell to a Renaissance Man

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We celebrated the life of Marshall Wilkinson at a memorial service last week with his beautiful wife and his four sons and two daughters and their wives and husbands. And the crowds of people who appeared at the Wilkinson parties gathered after the service in the garden that Marshall had planned and planted and cared for.

Having Marshall for a friend all my life made every time with him a celebration. The first time, I think, was at Miss Kramer’s dancing school when I was 10 and he was 12.

I don’t suppose Marshall really had to be taught to dance. He arrived on the Earth dancing, like Ariel, like Puck. When I danced with Marshall, I didn’t know my feet were there. Every step he took was so right, it was what my own feet wanted to do, if they had the grace and skill. It was like being held in the arms of the music.

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When he died the other day, he left us all a heritage of music, laughter, fun, silliness, loyalty and beauty. But they were his to give, because he had created those things and gave them to his friends out of his open-handed largesse.

We went through Beverly Hills High School together. He and his best friend, Robert Dale Owen, were art majors and their department head was a tall, large-boned lady with a store of learning and skill to share. When she found Marshall and Bob, she opened her treasure of knowledge and poured it out. Miss Wardrop was like most fine teachers. She taught all the art students carefully and well and when she found bright lights with blazing talents like Marshall and Bob, she bent the rules because they were worth it.

Both boys were aware of her gift to them and they visited her, took her small, carefully chosen gifts and made her feel like one of the world’s great beauties until the end of her life.

We did all the things kids did then. We cut school on the first warm day of spring and went to the beach, usually to Castle Rock. That was as far the coast road went back then. And we went up to the Rindge property, the Malibu Ranch that was fenced and posted and patrolled by riders on horseback.

I don’t know if they carried guns, but we hoped so. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been the high adventure to climb between the strands of barbed wire and run down that untouched beach. Several times, we dared to spread beach towels and lie in the sun waiting to be shooed off the private property. My heart beat like a conga drum and when the guards rode up, we ran like deer. They surely wondered what possible fun two silly kids could get from sitting on a private beach when there were miles of almost pristine beach behind us. Of course, but they weren’t posted, fenced and guarded. The tang of the forbidden is heady stuff.

Then we would go back to the shelter of Castle Rock--since bulldozed for the extension of the Coast Highway--and cook our hot dogs.

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But one time, we were riding up the coast road after Malibu was open. We were in college by then, Marshall at USC and I at Mount St. Mary’s. For no reason at all except that we had been to an exceptionally festive dance, Marshall raised himself to the top of the supple leather front seat and steered with his feet on the wheel.

We were in his father’s Buick, the most exciting car I have ever seen. It was penuche tan with cinnamon fenders. Of course the top was down and the pro forma moon was setting behind Catalina.

We were stopped by a policeman and escorted to the Malibu jail. By that time, we were subdued almost to immobility. We were allowed to call our parents and in both cases, with rotten luck, our fathers answered. They compared notes and decided to leave us there where we sat most of the night on a bench, drinking Cokes and eating licorice. All of this foolishness, some of it dangerous, was out of health and high spirits, not liquor and, of course, not narcotics. They were not in our world.

Marshall was a superb artist and became an architect. His beautiful houses and commercial buildings are all over Los Angeles, every detail perfect.

From the time we were in high school, he was a marvelous big brother to his two sisters, Travis and Eugenia. He had two aging aunts who lived alone and were often bedridden. Every time we went out, we would drop by and see one of the ladies.

He married Elvira after graduation from USC, a stunning Bolivian girl who had gone to Marymount.

He worked hard and had a list of friends, all of whom thought they were his best friend. He emanated an aura of charm, a sense of a great deal of life being a lark although we knew early, as Depression kids, that a lot of it was gray and grim. Marshall never gave any fealty to gloominess.

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I never asked him for anything, a favor, a scrap of information, that he didn’t immediately produce for me. My mother died when I was 18 and when my father and I followed the casket down the center aisle of old St. Victor’s, the first thing I saw near the back of the church was the back of Marshall’s dear curly brown head and next to him, tall Bob.

“It’s going to be all right,” I thought. “Marshall and Bob are here.”

Marshall was a true Renaissance man, a label too easily tacked on anyone who can do two things at once. By that, I mean, he loved beauty of line, color, design and contour and created it over and over, all of his sun-struck life. He is dead, but no more gone than the songs of dawn birds or the first eight bars of “Stardust.”

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