Old Friends - George V. Packard 1932-2011

On the edge of the little seasonal stream that runs through a culvert under the farm road near my neighbor's house is a stand of ancient maples.

Long ago, a row of these trees was planted alongside the road all the way up and over the hill. The oldest survivors are several hundred years old with trunks a good 6 feet in diameter. This particular group looks like descendants of that first generation. They have grown from seeds encouraged to thrive by the presence of the water.

Around the time I was taking this picture today, my old friend and mentor George Packard was breathing his last breath in a hospital in the Canary Islands. Like these trees, he stood tall and strong and bigger-than-life. At 79, he has journeyed on to the next adventure.

George was a writer, a teacher and a muse. Hugely intelligent and well-read, he loved to lead people to new ways of thinking. For many years he taught high school kids in the US and France, and they invariably idolized him.

Sayings like, "If it doesn't add, it subtracts," inspired thousands of students to revise their writing. "Stream of consciousness is when your underwear creeps up into your butt crack while you're writing an essay for tomorrow morning," is another memorable quotation.

George would put his feet up on the desk and roll up his sleeves at the start of every class. He loved to teach Hemingway, Conrad, or Samuel Beckett's plays and dig into the deep issues. As former student A. Richard Ross said to me, "He was such a change from the pedantic and hidebound traditions that our minds felt like a fresh breeze had swept the dank drear away."

His first wife, his third wife and his daughter are all successful artists and George himself published four books and many magazine stories. Norman Mailer was a neighbor and drinking buddy in Provincetown, Massachusetts. George's life was spent living in the world of the arts, with all its associated drama and angst.

Eventually leaving the US to live in Europe, he spent many years on Sherkin Island off the coast of Ireland where he worked at everything from salmon fishing to organic vegetable farming. He ran an art gallery for his wife Kordula Packard the painter in their home, and wrote books while he gazed out the window at Roaring Water Bay.

It was a good life, with some sad parts, but all in all it was extraordinary and even the sad parts were dramatically, romantically tragic...like a novel. Like the novels he loved and the novels he wrote.

Go with the flow, George. I'll see you on the Astral Plane! Save me a seat.

xo~G