Don Calamar
By A Bunch of GuysDon Calamar learned to abhor war, not in the movie-lit Tom Hanks mode, but in the really tough, nasty, in-your-face way.
His widow, Pat Chamberlin, says that after WWII, peace was a lifelong passion with Don. Together, they were a formidable couple . . .soft-spoken, yet firm. Sparkling, yet determined.
It was only last week that many of us learned Don Calamar won the Army's third highest decoration, the Silver Star, for bravery: on December 29th 1944, at the time of the Battle of The Bulge, the ferocious final counter-attack launched by the Germans, Don pulled a wounded GI away from a burning field, then went back to get another wounded man, under withering
German fire.
He got a Bronze Star for gallantry shortly thereafter, in February 1945. Those experiences, plus what else he saw and filmed, were enough to turn him ever after against war.
Unlawfully Detained
Most of us didn't know that he had once been detained for demonstrating for peace outside Vandenberg: Sometime in the mid-1980s, while Pat strummed her guitar, Don and a group of Quakers stood across the street from the main entrance to Vandenberg, an act of peaceful protest which unsettled the Air Force.
The group was hustled onto the Base, told they would never, ever be allowed to return, fingerprinted, then released. They sued the USAF for unlawful detention, and a Los Angeles Federal Court eventually upheld the right of citizens to protest peacefully in streets which were not part of a military complex.
Two or three years later, to his impish delight, Calamar actually went into Vandy's missile silos as part of a City College educational team.
On another occasion, Don led a group of six or seven protestors up to Pres. Reagan's Rancho del Cielo. A Secret Service agent met them, asked if one of them was (the well-known protestor) Don Calamar, and told him Reagan was not at home. Don smiled beatifically at the agent, and said, "Isn't it wonderful God's on our side?"
Don Calamar was a comrade with a friendly, almost pixy-ish grin, always encouraging those with whom he marched up State Street from September 2002, as the Iraq invasion began to threaten.
A leading Santa Barbara 's peace activist, recalls, "Don Calamar had the capacity to be peaceful yet insistent at the same time. He never lost those qualities . . .He smiled and loved you the whole time."
Arlington West
Weekend before this past one, as on so many other Sundays since last November, there he had been stumping around Arlington West, handing out postcards to visitors, explaining, in his gentle, persuasive voice what the memorial was all about.. Walking in the yielding sand of West Beach , in the at-times broiling sun, was a bit tough on an 86 year-old guy with a gimpy leg and excruciating arthritis.
When it was really bad, he reluctantly used a gnarly walking stick, which he hated, because it gave away his infirmity.
Don was a founding member of the Col. Jim and Prof. Shirley Kennedy Chapter of Veterans for Peace. A week ago Monday evening, he was at the regular Veterans for Peace meeting, folded into his chair, waiting patiently for a chance to insist, albeit, as always, gently, that we pay attention to a United Nations Day benefit. That meeting room will be a little emptier now.
Peace . . .And The Camera
Don was born on March 3 1918 in New York City ; but he spent his formative years in Woodstock NY , which seems to be a fitting place for a guy like Calamar to have grown up. His father had emigrated from northern Italy , near Genoa . His mother was English. It was she who cut the final "i" off the family name, so it wouldn't sound like a bunch of squid.
After high school, and lacking money for college, Don joined FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, which was a semi-military group of youths who did Depression-era construction work. Don's group built one of the New York 's famous getaways, Bear Mountain Park.
When World War II came, Don found himself in the Army's Signal Corps. He made all the campaigns in the European Theatre of Operations . . . North Africa , Sicily , Italy . And then, shortly after D-Day 60 years ago, Corporal Calamar came into Normandy on a landing craft, teamed up with a still cameraman, and they started the long slog to Victory in Europe.
The pair had passes signed by Gen. Eisenhower which permitted them to go where they chose in search of material. There is a photograph, unfortunately grainy, which shows a handsome young Calamar looking quizzical in Paris at the time of Liberation, in 1944.
Filming Willy and Joe
Other frames from his camerawork, which Don laboriously printed from motion-picture film negative, are, in many ways, scenes of Bill Mauldin's famous cartoon GI's, Willy and Joe, come to life in photographs. \Indeed, Calamar's footage appeared in the legendary "March of Time" series of contemporary documentary news reports . . .and was decades later used in Bill Moyers' PBS wartime retrospectives.
He followed the war into Germany 's devastation, traveling with his still-camera buddy through the Rhine-Ruhr industrial areas, even to the Netherlands and Denmark , to film aspects of the Allied victories.
By V-E Day, he had had enough of war.
Don was 28 when he was discharged, as a sergeant. A family member: "He was very good-looking, like a movie hero." He "bummed around New York and LA," and worked for a while in a Los Angeles camera store. He also married for the first time.
Brooks Institute
Soon he moved to Santa Barbara , and hooked up with Henry Weston who, with Arthur Brooks, had just started Brooks Institute. For some 20 years, Don oversaw The Institute's camera equipment, until he, typically, clashed with management over retirement benefits for the employees, in 1973.. On the side, he did a lot of outdoor photography.
He had divorced and was single for six years. Money from Brooks didn't cover his family's needs, so Don taught photography for decades in Adult Ed evening courses, which he combined with his long-standing reverence for the outdoors, symbolized by his four-decade membership in The Sierra Club.
Don met Pat Chamberlin, at the time, a social worker, and a woman well-known for her generosity of spirit at Adult Ed. They married in 1975, and would have celebrated their 29th anniversary this week. It was, says one of their children, "a very rich time."
For 18 late-century summers, the Calamars went to Alaska to help a son-in-law and daughter who had a tourist-guide business near and around Mt. McKinley . Don joyously shot film, especially when he caught a ride on the company's air taxi to the outback.
Man of Passions
Don Calamar's prime passion was for the wellbeing of his family: the five children of his own, plus the three he adopted (of Japanese and Mexican origin), plus Pat's five, now all of them grown and scattered.
He was, says one of them "passionately dedicated to his family . . . He was an incredible father!" Another adds, "totally understanding . . .a most loving man!" The only time all thirteen children of both Don and Pat managed to get together was at their wedding.
One of the children: "He worked two jobs to put food on the table, but he always, always found time to take the family out, every weekend . ...climbing, or to the beach, or to the Natural History Museum."
Don Calamar's third passion became the avoidance of war, which he had seen so close-up and perilously. He supported the UN and any other sensible program which advanced the cause of peace.
To illustrate his beliefs, Don dug into his archive of brittle World War II negative film and very gently coaxed positive prints from the frames. These he blew up into gallery-size prints which he showed at the Resource Center for Non-Violence in Santa Cruz and, last year, at the Goleta Library.
That was Don Calamar's last show.
One of The Guys speaks for all of us: "He touched us all in many ways. . ..such a lovable person - almost like a father to all of us. So dedicated, motivated and sincere. . ."
The Calamar-Chamberlin family plans a memorial service for Don Calamar at 10.00AM on Fathers Day, Sunday, June 20th at Goleta Beach , Area D.
Donations in Don's name would be welcome at The Resource Center for Non Violence, 515 Broadway, Santa Cruz CA 95060 , or to Santa Barbara Veterans for Peace, % Dorothy Macintosh, 566 Dolores Drive , Santa Barbara CA 93109
Don's Children: Judith; Michael; Mark; Doug; Diane; Tina; David; Joanne
Pat's Children Russell (d. 1999); Liz; Susan; Mark; Tom.
Bayard: 966-2695