Sara Morris, who died at home in Inverness Park on April 6, is remembered by many people around the continent who barely know each other. From Queens, New York, to Providence, Rhode Island, through Laurel Canyon to Sausalito and via Pender Island, British Columbia, to West Marin, Sara left a trail of acquaintances, working associates, friends and students who remember her well and fondly. Many say they’ll never forget her. I tracked down a few of them in search of memories they could share of a quiet, modest but extraordinary woman who was twice my neighbor, here and in Sausalito, and a force to almost everyone she crossed paths with.
First the basics, compiled by my even older friend, Sara’s husband, David Hastings, through whom I met Sara in Sausalito sometime in the addled 1960s. Sara was born in Queens on July 18, 1945 to Max and Mary Morris, Polish Jews whose families escaped the Nazis prior to the war, and had an older sister, Jane, who predeceased her in 2016.
The Morris girls grew up in New Rochelle, N.Y. Sara attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where she majored in painting before moving to New York City to frequent the folk music scene in Greenwich Village. At RISD, she met and became close friends with Susan Pomerantz, who remembers Sara as a “warm, wonderful friend, smart as a whip and hilariously funny, who became an extremely talented artist, attracted to the wild side.” In New York, Susan and Sara got tattooed and rode with a motorcycle gang, although somehow they managed to stay out of serious trouble.
In the Village, Sara met and befriended Joni Mitchell, Eric Andersen and other writers and singers of the folk era, including Phil Ochs and his wife, Alice. Later, in California, after Phil took his life, Sara lived with Alice in Mill Valley.
Incidentally, Sara was not a name dropper. I am, so after she left us and I learned about all these connections from her past, I became even more impressed with her than I already was. And, of course, I envy her life. Who wouldn’t? Read on.
In 1968, Sara moved from New York to Los Angeles with songwriter David Blue, who had received a recording contract with Warner. While there, she hung out at Joni’s house in Laurel Canyon, and took in the scene we now all know so much about. But L.A. was not to her liking, so she took a job with filmmaker Larry Hankin, a co-founder of The Committee, a satirical theater group in San Francisco, with whom she lived for a while in Sausalito while they worked together on a documentary. Through Larry she met my housemate Eugenia Morrison, and through Eugenia, David, who lived in a small cabin behind our place on the boardwalk. That was it. Sara never left David’s side. In 1973, they left an “over-yuppified” Sausalito, crossed the coastal range, bought a house in Inverness, and married in 1992.
Had Canada allowed Americans to move up and live there permanently, West Marin might have lost her. But new immigration rules only allow six-month visits, which David and Sara took advantage of for years, creating a whole new community of people on remote North Pender Island, many of whom remember her.
“Sara loved the small, friendly community and the rural lifestyle of Pender,” friend Sally Robinson recalled. “She and David spent summers in the cottage that I now live in. My neighbours next door have a little brown and white goat named Puck that Sara bonded with. She loved spoiling him with banana peels, his favorite treat. When she became ill, Sara made sure that I took over her job spoiling Puck. Now when I feed him his treats, I always think of Sara. And so, I’m sure, does Puck.”
Another Pender neighbor, Janet Kroetsch, remembers Sara as something of a trespasser who would use “the excuse of searching for her wayward dog, Fanny. She made many discoveries looking for Fanny and met many other people who still remember her fondly.”
Could one say that Sara ultimately “settled down” in West Marin? Not really. She did give up a lot of the excitement of her peregrine hippie life, and Pender Island, but she remained preternaturally unsettled—and for good reason. There was vital work to be done in her new community, and Sara dove right in.
Socorro Romo, now the executive director of West Marin Community Services, remembers meeting Sara on a local dairy when she was working with David at Catholic Charities. “She wanted to ensure that Latinos living on the farms and isolated areas had access to their services,” Socorro said. “Sara was curious and feisty. I identified well with her immediately, and we became friends, in fact part of my family, to the end always with us at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and birthdays.”
Along with Rebecca Porrata, Sara found her way up to Tomales High School, where she became a counselor to Latino students who needed assistance that ranged from getting to college to dealing with life. Whatever it was, Sara was there for them. Barbara Jay, who was chair of the Inverness Scholarship Committee until 2013, said she “counted on Sara’s wise, generous and very sharp assessments of students seeking scholarships, for whom she was a passionate advocate whose counsel I never ignored, and I came to believe that her students felt the same way. She really led the way for us all.”
Students who shared memories of Sara all seemed to feel they had received special attention. But when he spoke to classmates, Noe Padilla discovered that wasn’t really so. “She didn’t cherry pick and only help those who were on the right trajectory,” he said. “She made it her life’s work to help anyone, whether a straight A student or a teen mom. She did great things for the least advantaged, which is why, in my eyes, she will always be one of the true unsung heroes of our community.”
Cesar Martinez, another Tomales student, offered a particularly poignant recollection of Sara: “She was not just a counselor holding my hand through the college application process, ensuring that I would be the first person in my family to go to college, she was also my confidant, who listened to me without judgment, accepted who I was and guided me to my authentic self. She was my safe place and the definition of unconditional love.”
Mark Dowie moved to West Marin about 10 years after David and Sara, settling where he still lives with Sara’s close friend Wendy Schwartz, on Willow Point.