 Ed Garren, traveler, bob vivant, thinker and writer. By Ryan Gierach. |
In her book "Singing & Swinging & Gettin Merry Like Christmas", Maya Angelou tells of her travels through Europe and the Middle east with a road show of "Porgy & Bess". While in Yugoslavia, she discovers that the Slavs are the most passionate people in Europe, perhaps the world.
Certainly, I have been blessed (or cursed) with that aspect of my father's blood.
In case you missed that part of the story, Garren is my father's adopted last name. He took it from his first step-father when he was five because it sounded more "American" than Vremsak, the name his parents had used to flee to America before he was born. There is increasing evidence that his mother lied about his father dying of pneumonia when he was three (we've never found a death certificate or grave), which fits with her keeping the secret of his real last name her entire life, and carrying it to her grave. What we do know is that he was Austrian, from Vienna, Franz Joseph's favorite cavalry officer and the family business was banking.
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 Edna and Edward V. Garren in 1947. |
Passion is not an easy gift. Most of my life I've had a secret desire to be small, quiet and pretty. From my tall, big and loud vantage point, being demure seems like less work. I'm sure the demure among us would disagree, the grass is always greener on the other side.
Just like the stories of my grandfather I've heard, and the experience of watching my father, my heart gets me in trouble. If it was only romance perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, but it's life, with all it's full richness, variations of humanity, and the generous nature of God. On some deep level, I'm just so glad to be alive, and I want to share a good thing.
I'm drawn to other passionate people. I loved watching Eric Hoffer talk about his life and what he'd learned. Maya Angelou was one of my first loves. The sharing of her struggle to embrace her "difference", and the swirling passions of her being, provided me with solace and inspiration.
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 Edward V. Garren, age 28 |
Being his favored child meant catching the full brunt of his torment, which was legendary. But it also meant I was his confidant and comrade. Our finest hours were spent in the car during my early teens, when he was collecting his ninety day no pay past due accounts.
Edward V. Garren was the consummate "Finance Man". In his younger days, he put Commercial Credit of Tampa Florida on the business map. He built up their business from a small office, to the largest consumer credit company in Tampa. They financed autos, furniture, appliances, and home improvements. His innovative style moved the corporation into strategic niche markets, easily eclipsing the competition.
In Dade City he managed a loan company, American Finance. Years later I would run into people who would tell me that his willingness to take a chance on them financially had changed their lives.
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One, the first Black Bail Bonds-woman in the state of Florida, recounted how he had lent her money to put down on her first piece of commercial property in Tampa. She was a single mother, an entrepreneur in the early 1960s and against all odds, he had lent her the final $600 she needed for the down payment. When I asked him about it, he simply stated, "I knew her people, they were all honest and hard working, that was all the collateral I needed."
My father and I would ride together and he would tell the stories of his life, and his passions in between his stops to get payments. He was a pro and I learned a lot from him. If you've ever seen "Big Fish", my father was his own version of Edward Bloom and he cut a wide swath on the path of life.
In one of our travels, riding through the swamp in our 1961 Corvair Monza, he shared with me one of his inner secrets. "We're not like most people, we've been given a special gift, we have the ability to remind people they are special.
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Most people spend lives of quiet desperation, and no one ever notices them. You and I light up a room when we walk into it. You should always take the time to share yourself with people. Remember their names, tell them a joke or a funny story, help them to laugh, give them a moment that makes them feel special, because they are, but few take the time to remind them of it."
My father left a trail of folks that felt special for having known him. I've tried to honor his legacy, even when it hurts. I think this is the nature of creation and of God, to love till it hurts. Otherwise life gets routine all too quickly.
My last piece about Eric Rofes passing, and the evocations of that period in my life were equally evocative for a few readers. I've passed them along for inclusion here. They reflect other aspects of "Love till it hurts."
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Dear Ed, I remember, but without so much pain. I do especially remember Sheldon (Andelson) 'disappearing' to that monster home on the hill--disappearing utterly. No word, no visitors allowed, no calls taken or returned...and then 'Sheldon a wizened skeleton, gone'....What a delightful, gregarious, outgoing, and manipulative man he was. It was fun knowing him, and Marty Rocklin who just died a couple of years ago, and...luckily I was 'not pretty enough, and already too old' to be able to 'do' Greg's...and I was at the end of my drinking. Today that (HIV) seems like such a much easier disease to manage than, say, late onset diabetes which so many of us will contract because of our simply eating too much, getting older, and remaining sedentary. Ah well. Love to you, T
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I "enjoyed" your article. Human relations are always filled with the human ego, and therefore difficulties are always present. The pain of human suffering, dying and death always mark us. Sometimes, I wish always, we would learn to treat one another with gentleness and love , rather than allowing our hurts and pains of the past interfere with our intelligence and feelings. However, time has a way of bringing us around to see deeper and more clearly the joy and happiness we have found in and through the many friendships which have formed and informed our lives. Your article lets one see the insights and perspective you have gained.
Thanks for sharing, A
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Ed: Once again you have put yesterday, today and tomorrow into perspective. From generation to generation it will never end and it seems we are destined to never learn. Your article brought back memories and yes reminders of what we tried to change, we succeeded in some, but isn’t it ironic how those who most needed to know did not want to listen. Keep writing, I will keep reading. G
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Your piece was poignant beyond belief; I am struck by its similarity to the
recitations of horrors from those who have endured long combat experiences.
I can not begin to imagine what it must have been like for you nor what the
lasting effects must be.
Love always, B
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Once again, you’ve blown me away. I think of you, frankly, as the Cassandra of the GLBT movement, an often unwelcome oracle of an impending future the myopia of the present won’t allow us to confront. But I had not experienced your power to re-trace our steps down the roads traveled in our history.
I could have written your column on the passing of Eric Rofes’ verbatim, had I your power with words – I had no idea you were living it, even as I was. My best friend (who fled L.A. before you arrived but knew all the “players”) has been easing me through the shock, grief and memories evoked by Eric’s death – especially about the love/hate relationship he and I also had. He was a giant. Giants need lots of room. Occasionally Eric found me in his space and never hesitated to tell me so. But we were on the same team (I also encountered him at Bear gatherings), knew it and acknowledged it – unlike the sexual smolder between us.
Your recount of the good old/bad old days also struck too close to home. I was still on the L.A. Gay/Lesbian Police Advisory Task Force when the trailblazing, irascible Justin Smith became the first, but not last, of its members we would lose to AIDS.
I was having dinner in Silverlake arguing G/L politics with future WeHo mayor Steve Schulte one night when his then-partner, Joe Thompson, impatiently interrupted my complaint about a fellow activist with a phrase I had never heard before, “Just get OVER it!”
I was dumbfounded when I finally “got” why AIDS activist Daniel Warner, the picture of handsome health, always seemed so unforgiving on the subject of safe sex, when I learned he himself had succumbed to the disease.
I fell hard for and got rejected by a guy all in a single encounter one Sunday morning at (Greg's) Blue Dot – only to come to the eventual realization that, since everyone I knew in the place was now dead, being preemptively dumped probably saved my life.
The last time I saw checkbook activist and friend Duke Comegys was at the funeral of former Advocate publisher Niles Merton, who beckoned me to his bedside at Midway Hospital weeks earlier as I walked the halls in search of another friend, former Stonewall Democratic Club president Steve W., whose room was down the hall from that of Republican WeHo activist Tom Larkin.
One night when we were still headquartered in Silverlake, the entire Board of Directors of Christopher Street West adjourned to the Frog Pond for a late supper, teasing our solicitous host, Bob White, about his well-known political ambitions, just weeks and steps from where he would soon hang himself.
And I thought I was the only one who remembered the death finale in “Mandingo” well enough to recognize its horrifying reprise in Polanski’s “The Pianist” decades later, when Jews in the film lay prostrate on command and remained that way – almost patiently -- as a Nazi officer calmly walked down the line firing a bullet into each of their heads.
Thank you, Ed, for conjuring up these disquieting images long suppressed from my own past – which is precisely why they need to be re-visited. Let us remember the pain, lest we doom ourselves to re-live it.
I remember, but without so much pain. I do especially remember Sheldon (Andelson) 'disappearing' to that monster home on the hill--disappearing utterly. No word, no visitors allowed, no calls taken or returned...and then 'Sheldon a wizened skeleton, gone'....What a delightful, gregarious, outgoing, and manipulative man he was. It was fun knowing him, and Marty Rocklin who just died a couple of years ago, and...luckily I was 'not pretty enough, and already too old' to be able to 'do' Greg's...and I was at the end of my drinking. Today that (HIV) seems like such a much easier disease to manage than, say, late onset diabetes which so many of us will contract because of our simply eating too much, getting older, and remaining sedentary. Ah well. Love to you, T
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There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times - Molly Ivins.
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Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT, Edward "Ed" Garren, MFT is a Family Therapist, justice activist, former West Hollywood City Council candidate, writer and sojourner. He is originally from the Tampa Bay area of central Florida. Ed has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Frontiers news magazine, and other books, including "Out of My Mind", a pictorial memoir by Kris Nelson. He is currently working on a book about Addiction in America. More information about Ed can be found at: www.edgarren.us.
Ed Garren can be reached, even in the Red America’s wilds, at