I learned of two friends’ deaths last week, Jim Mafchir who I’ve known since 1964 and George Moffett who we met with his wife, Suzanne, when we were living on our boat soon after I retired. Although I didn’t see Jim or George on a regular basis, we were part of each other’s lives.
We had boating in common and I’ll always remember him soldiering up the dock each morning, with his lunch pail, on his way to work which, at that time, was doing faux paintings for some well-known clients in Fairfield County such as William F. Buckley, Jr. George was a renaissance person, developing creative skills such as music and painting, and my entry details those accomplishments. Our hearts go out to his wife, Suzanne.
Although I have mentioned Jim in this blog, I never dedicated an entry entirely to him, so he deserves more detail here. Jim and I had a relationship dating back to 1964 when, out of college, I met him in New York City at the production department of Johnson Reprint Corporation. I was assigned to Jim who had printing and production experience; and was a graduate of the NY School of Printing. With my liberal arts background, I lacked any technical expertise and initially he was my mentor and we became friends.
In fact I lived with him for a while in the East Village after my divorce in the late 1960’s. Those were different times; we were still in our 20s, Janis Joplin still rocking the Fillmore East, only blocks away. Jim had a motorcycle and I was a frequent companion on the back and we planned an adventure to Fire Island for one weekend, leaving the bike at the ferry pier and taking our back packs, hoping to find a place to bed down in a house. (Ann, who I hardly knew at the time, shared a vacation home on that section of the Island. That was not her weekend to be there, and unfortunately even had she been there, there was no room in her house for two extra guys, so we bedded down in our sleeping bags on the beach with dune buggies occasionally coming precariously close.) He moved to the southwest in the early 1970s. I hadn’t seen him for at least 20 years until we visited Santa Fe in 2008 and spent time with him and Judy and had a close email relationship with him ever since.
Even though we were geographically separated, our careers had a degree of parallelism. While I was running a publishing company in Westport, CT., he established Red Crane Press and then Western Edge Press, imprints that focused on Southwest history. He was an adventurer; in spite of fighting cancer for the latter part of his life; he was a mountain climber and a skier, taking him to various parts of the world to pursue his passions.
Professionally, he contributed to two of my publishing projects as he was a talented graphics designer. I didn’t have to ask him; he volunteered, designing my first piano CD cover, Sentimental Mood, and my first published book, New York to Boston.
More detail on Jim can be found on legacy.com. Jim, old friend, rest in peace. You are missed.
