Intro to the Hazlehurst Memoirs
Nov. 5, 2024 – Election Day! Like many of us in our sadly divided electorate, I’m dismayed. If my preferred candidate doesn’t win the presidency, I think the nation will go to hell in a handbasket.
But concerned as I am by the fate of our country, I’m also troubled by the ravages of time. I was born in Colorado Springs on Nov. 5, 1940, so I’ll be 84 when either Harris or Trump ascend to the Oval Office. Will I be around for the 2028 contest? Possibly, but who knows?
A backward glance: It’s been a great ride, full of adventure, unexpected (and often undeserved) good fortune, good times, good friends, multiple careers, three wives, old age, irrelevance and decent chardonnay. Most of all, it’s been fun, fun, fun … and far from taking the T-Bird away, my wife Karen gave me one for my 80th birthday (2004 merlot-red with a sweetly rumbling Borla exhaust system).
After sharing some of my more outlandish stories with my editor Heila Ershadi, she suggested that I write a complete and reasonably truthful narrative of my life and times, spreading it out over a few issues of the Bulletin. So here goes!
Early October 1961. I had another dreary year to go until I’d be finished with Wesleyan, and ready to embark upon life after college. Grad school? Hated the idea. Get an ill-paid job and hope I’d be good at it? Less hateful, but still unappetizing.
And then arrived a letter with a Baltimore return address.
It was from a law firm, and it made no sense. It began “Under the will of John Gill, deceased January 7, 1912, a trust was established … blah blah blah.” What was this all about? I kept reading, and gradually realized that it was about money. The trust was terminated, and proceeds were to be divided among the heirs. Since my father had predeceased me, I was one of them. Tens and tens of thousands – and it was mine!
No more grad school, no more boring post-college jobs, no more problems – so what should I do? In a few weeks, I figured it out: I’d buy a sailboat, enlist a couple of friends and sail around the world. As an amateur lepidopterist for many years, I’d contribute to science by collecting butterflies in remote, relatively unexplored islands in the Pacific. Job one was to buy a sailboat.
I contacted a yacht broker, Ed Payne at Sparkman & Stephens, and met with him. He listened politely and asked me whether I was financially able to purchase a sizable sailboat. Satisfied, he had one more question. “Does your mother know about this?”
Affirmative. We looked at boats for a few weeks, and I decided to buy a 56-foot wooden ketch, built in 1924. She was pitch pine on oak, iron-fastened and had been well maintained by past owners. She needed some work to be ready for a circumnavigation, and of course it took longer and cost more than anticipated. Formerly Aurelia, I renamed her Paisano. With a crew of five (including my college roommate Mike Riley), we set sail for the South Seas in August of 1962.
And, of course, we didn’t know what the hell we were doing.
We were becalmed off Atlantic City on day one, the engine wouldn’t start, we were drifting toward the coast – so we called the Coast Guard to come save us. Not exactly an auspicious beginning! But we persevered, and the adventures began.
Down the eastern seaboard to Miami, a few days to reprovision and then to Panama via the Yucatan Strait. Becalmed again, this time a couple of miles from the Cuban coast at the height of the Cuban missile crisis.
No worries! We made it to Panama, passed through the canal, spent weeks cruising the-then rarely visited Galapagos, headed west, picked up the Southeast Trades and headed for the Marquesas, almost 3,000 miles of open water.
It was magical. In those days, there were no freighters, fishing boats or commercial craft of any kind – just us, and the wide blue sea. The ocean was alive with whales, dolphins and schools of fish. It seemed primeval, unchanging and eternal.
After 23 days, we arrived in Hiva Oa. It was beautiful beyond imagining, but we only stayed for a few days before heading south for the Tuamotu islands and finally to Tahiti.
In those days, Tahiti was the island of dreams. No airport, no cruise ships, no crowds. Half a dozen cruising sailboats were moored on the Papeete waterfront. I spoke a little French, and it felt like home.
I didn’t want to leave, and the crew abandoned ship and headed back to the States. I stayed, and while walking down the waterfront one day I saw a beautiful girl. She smiled, we chatted, became friends, and slowly fell in love.
Jeanne was almost 18, and I was 22. Her family accepted me, and we married a few months later. Somehow, it became international news; Paris Match, the French equivalent of Life headlined our marriage as “Le Prince se Mari avec la Bergere” (the prince marries the shepherdess). A few months later, we found a couple of new crewmembers, and headed west, bound for Moorea, Raiatea, Huahine, Samoa, Fiji, New Caledonia, Australia and dozens of other destinations.
In 1966 we stopped in Malta, where our son Francis was born. Crossing the Atlantic with a baby didn’t seem like a great idea, so Jeanne flew back to Tahiti with Francis, while I headed for Spain, Gibraltar, and the Atlantic, crossing my outbound longitude and completing the circumnavigation five years after starting it. Sailing into the Carenage in Grenada, I felt strangely at home, as if a new chapter was opening in my life.
It was.
John Hazlehurst has been deeply involved in the community, including serving on the Colorado Springs City Council and in the founding of the Historic Preservation Alliance. He has previously written for the Colorado Springs Independent and the Colorado Springs Business Journal.
All installments of The Hazlehurst Memoirs may be found at PikesPeakBulletin.org.
