Fernando Gonzalo Garcia (1940-2020)

He knew the city as if he had imagined it into existence.  This always amazed me since it was not the place of his birth.  He came here as a boy from Santiago de Guayaquil, Ecuador, and immediately began to explore his new metropolis.  He and his cousin would ride their bikes through the streets:  downtown, Pico-Union, MacArthur Park, Hancock Park, Griffith Park—every neighborhood, street by street, he knew it all, a map indelibly pressed into his memory.

Often, when I needed to go to a particular neighborhood, I would call him to ask the best way to go.  He knew.  Always.  These were his streets where he had driven city buses for his professional life, first as a Rapid Transit District (RTD) operator and later, driving Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) buses including those big articulated behemoths.  He moved into accident investigation after he had to chase some teenagers off the bus for bothering other passengers.  Out on the sidewalk, one picked up a large stone and hit him between the shoulder blades.  No serious damage, but his driving days were done.

He was a graduate of Los Angeles High School, class of 1958, and told the story often that the actor Dustin Hoffman was only a year or two or three ahead of him.  His first paying job was at Bullocks Wilshire, one of the many landmarks of his life that is no longer there.

In 1962 he enlisted in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Duluth, Minnesota.  A boy from the Republic of the Equator serving his adopted country from frigid Duluth, Minnesota—the irony was not lost on him.  He served honorably, surviving on leftovers provided by his friend who was a cook, mainly spaghetti and veal cutlets, a meal once he left the service, he never ate again.

After his time in the Air Force, he moved back to Los Angeles to raise his family.  He became a painter specializing in landscapes and painted wood carvings.  He owned a gallery in downtown Los Angeles, and traveled the western United States for art shows at malls and public parks.  My wife remembers the night when he called from Colorado upset because he had hit a deer on a lonely highway and totaled his van.  The fortunes of an artist could not support a young family, so he segued into driving a city bus.

He loved classical music, foreign films, literature, and current events.  He enjoyed cooking and sharing special meals with loved ones, and brought joy to the community of elderly neighbors and friends in his last apartment building.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, we kept telling him not to leave his apartment door unlocked to neighbors and visitors.  By then, he was suffering from lung cancer, COPD, emphysema and aortic stenosis and was at high risk of dying should he contract the virus.  He would tell us on the phone or over Hangouts not to worry, that he was playing it safe.  Then, in the same breath, he would say, “Just a minute,” and we would hear him greet someone.  “I’ll call you back,” he would say, coming back on the line.  “It’s my neighbor and she needs me to look at her laundry cart.  The wheel is broken.”  We would get angry and tell him that was hardly playing it safe.  “It’s okay, I know her,” he would reply, as if friendship prevented infection.

As his multiple health problems worsened, we were not sure if his low blood oxygen level might be affecting his mental faculties.  My wife would call him and ask what he had for dinner, since we had all taken turns dropping off food for him.  “Yes, yes, I had tomato soup and grilled cheese,” he would say.  She would be upset with him, warning him that he had to watch his salt intake.  My brother-in-law would call an hour later and ask the same question and get a totally different answer.  What we learned later is that he was not eating much of anything except chocolate ice cream, his favorite.

He was a lifetime smoker, and would tell us he began when he was a teenager, yet when the doctor would ask, he would say he had only smoked for twenty years.  Outside the office, someone would remind him he did not start smoking at 60.  He would give us a sheepish grin and change the subject.  He had quit a number of times, but always went back.

Family was everything to him.  His happiest moments were spent with his son who followed in his footsteps in his professional life, and he was so proud of his daughter and granddaughter, both graduates of Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles.  He loved visiting the Chalon and Doheny campuses, learning about their histories and enjoying the scenery, libraries, and most of all, spending time at Mary Chapel.  He knew every spot where his favorite television show, Monk, was filmed on campus.  “This is where Monk figured it all out,” he would exclaim in a grassy area of the Circle, the center of campus.  We took him to see our offices on campus, and he looked at my wife’s door plate with great pleasure and pride.  “You went to school here, and now you work here,” he said quietly.  Outside, we made our way back to the car, and he stopped for a moment and stared out over Santa Monica to the ocean.  “You get to see this view every day,” he said to me.  “You’re very lucky.”

I will miss his kindness, his patience, his hearty, raspy laugh that made me smile.  That was his gift to everyone: his warm and embracing smile.  He was the light of our lives.  I will be forever in his debt for bringing my beautiful wife into the world.

Last week, when his health issues had taken a decidedly downward turn, he told us that he could not go on like this.  He needed to find peace, the kind of peace his cousin found when he passed recently.  This was the same cousin who rode bikes with him across the city all those years ago.  The desperate fight to fill his occluded lungs, his dizziness, his chronic anemia, the endless tests, poking and prodding, he was so tired of it all.

In that spirit, I hope that now he has found that peace, and a new city of dreams to explore.