Free Press Releases
******************************************************************Monday Jun 21, 2004
7:24 am
Memoriam to DON CALAMAR
DON CALAMAR
March 3 1918 - June 8 2004
By A Bunch of Guys
Don 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.
Calamar Home Phone: 964-3722 . . . .Bayard:
966-2695
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