Bob Fritschi
I came to know Russ Kingman because he helped me through a time of great personal trouble in my life. I would not be here today if he had not been there for me at that time in my life. As I got to know Russ well over the years, I became acquainted with a side of his person besides that of Jack London scholar and author.
Russ loved to build things and work with his hands. This was something I easily identified with because I have always been happiest working with my hands. Russ was always remodeling or adding around the bookstore and the house that he and Winnie lived in. I started helping him with those projects. Those days of work were usually followed by dinner with Russ and Winnie where I was treated to huge helpings of my favorite food, mashed potatoes with gravy. After dinner Russ would get warmed up and speak of his days on Guam when he fixed up a Quonset hut into a small place for him and Winnie to live in. He specialized in "liberating" whatever he needed for the project from the military installations on the island. I was shown many pictures from the family album of their time on Guam and later when he was pastor in Florida and built a beautiful church for the congregation.
Along with the stories and pictures I was able to see how Russ involved people around him in these projects and helped them to find direction in their lives, just as he did with me. Russ was always helping someone; he was without a doubt the most selfless person I have ever known. Because of that trait and the help he gave me, I had the honor of loving him as my father, and more than that, the knowledge that he loved me his son.
As Russ's life drew to a close he became all but an invalid. He never once complained to me of the pain; rather, his concern was for me and those about him right up to the end. The one thing he did tell me, though, was how much he hated not being able to build things and fix things; this made him feel helpless.
Russ devoted his whole life to helping others. I love him and remember him for that. But when I lay awake at night in that brief space after turning the light off and before going to sleep, what I will always remember in my mind's eye is Russ with the tools in his hands working hard all day. Those days I spent working at his side will always be my most treasured memories.
Dad, I hope wherever you are now that there is a saw, a hammer, and a can of paint for you to use. Maybe you and Jack can rebuild the Wolf House. Please know that you were loved by your son who misses you very much.
Most of you gathered here came to know Russ because of a common interest in Jack London. I came to know Russ because my life was a mess, and one day I turned to him out of desperation. Russ had infinite patience with people and a very special ability to guide people out of the wilderness of their troubles. I came to love Russ as a father because he did this for me. Russ's first concern in life was other people. As I got to know Russ better, I realized that helping other people, as he did me, was something he had been doing all of his life. Russ was without a doubt the most selfless person I have ever had the privilege of knowing.
In time I came to know a little bit about Jack London because Russ had a way of talking about Jack so that he became a person who was still alive, not just a writer who died a long time ago. I heard Russ start to speak of a Jack London Museum many years ago. At the time I wondered about it because a museum is always about some aspect of the past. Russ used to say the past is gone and dead; let's go out in the backyard and have a little ceremony and bury the past.
In the last few years Russ let me read letters from school children that he corresponded with. At first I did not catch on to what was happening. He was guiding these children and young adults to find a sense of direction in their lives. By introducing them to the story of Jack London's life, he was giving them a much-needed role model. Just as Jack did, they could overcome poverty, indifferent parents, broken homes, and the hard knocks of life. As a result of this correspondence I now understand that a Jack London Museum need not be a storehouse of the past. In reality it should be an Educational Center. A place for young people to come and learn about the life of a special man.
Our world today, full of senseless violence, our young people who lack role models cry out for something to fill this vacuum. What better role model could there be than Jack, who came from the most humble of backgrounds to become one of, if not the greatest of American writers. No government program got him there. No social worker did it. Jack relied on himself, set goals, stuck to it with determination until he succeeded.
Above all, I believe Russ should be remembered for his work with young people. Memorial plaques and awards are soon forgotten. Russ had a dream that there would be a place where people could come to draw inspiration from the life of Jack London.
Russ, I know you are listening and hope you understand that we to whom you gave so much of yourself love you and have not forgotten you, and we will see that your work goes on. I truly hope that those of you in this room will join with me and the Jack London Foundation by contributing your ideas, time, and energy to see that what Russ dreamed of comes to pass. In this way we can give Russ the memorial that he would have wished, that his special gift to others will live on in coming generations. Russ, forgive me if I did not express it well, but I really do know why you wanted it so much. It is up to us to do it for him. What is needed is your help and spirit.
Susan Nuernberg
The first time I met Russ was on a hot evening in August of 1992. One of the first things he said to me was, "What would you say to Jack London if he were to walk in here right now?"
I said I would ask him, "How'd you get here?" Then I asked Russ what he'd say and he replied, "I'd ask him , 'what's your mailing address these days?'"
That, I later realized, was my initiation into the world of Jack London as presided over by Russ. I learned two things from this experience. First, Russ kept the spirit of Jack London alive by talking and acting as if he might actually walk into our conversation at any moment. And second, Russ and I tended to see things in a similar way.
I had corresponded with Russ for two years before meeting him and Winnie. I had written a Ph.D. dissertation on Jack London and race while I was a student at the University of Massachusetts and had sent Russ a copy to read. He was so happy to have read it and he used to tell me that every time someone came into the bookstore and said, "Wasn't Jack London a racist?" he would pull out my dissertation and say, "Read!" The point I made in the dissertation is that London's views on Anglo-Saxon supremacy were representative of his period and that he first learned them from the president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan.
After I heard of Russ's death, I came across a passage written by Jack London that seemed to describe Russ perfectly. In "First Aid to Rising Authors" (Dec. 1900), London wrote,
The great men of the world become so because they had work to do in the world, and did it; because they worked busily and mightily, and lost themselves in their work, till they were surprised, one day, when honors fell thick upon them, and their names were on all men's lips.
Russ was a great man. There are people here today who have known Russ and Winnie forty and fifty years. He had work to do in the world of Jack London and he did it. He lost himself in his work and now his name is on all of our lips. I had hoped to see Russ again at the Birthday Banquet but he didn't make it. He slipped away from us on the winter solstice.
Russ was a great man; he had a great soul. I will really miss him. There is nothing I wouldn't do to help Winnie and the members of the Board of the Jack London Foundation carry on with the plans Russ had already set in motion for the future. Thank you very much.
Earle Labor:
Russ Kingman's All Gold Legacy
"Jack London launched writers by guiding them and launched books by praising them," Dale Walker tells us in his Introduction to No Mentor But Myself; "for writers--once-was, would-be, never-to-be, obscure and renowned, young and old--he was ever the available man."1 We need only to revise "writers" to "scholars," and the statement fits Russ Kingman perfectly. He was indeed, like Jack, ever the available man. "There was no one quite like him," says Dan Dyer; "What an incredible resource he was! You could call him anytime, day or night, and he was always ready to help you with any question about Jack London."2
I have subtitled this memorial tribute "Russ Kingman's All Gold Legacy" ("All Gold Canyon"). But "All Gold Legacies"' would perhaps be the more accurate term; for the Kingman legacy is truly manifold.
First, I should like briefly to discuss my own personal share in that legacy. My friendship with Russ started more than two decades ago, in late 1971, when I received a letter inviting me out to the Annual Jack London Birthday Banquet. Some prior academic commitments prevented my accepting his invitation, but that letter was the beginning of a comradely correspondence which lasted until his death just before Christmas in 1993. I haven't yet counted the number of letters I received from Russ, but they fill two bulging six-pocket file-folders in my home office. Four characteristics of those letters are consistently evident: their unflinching honesty, their wise insights (not only into the World of Jack London but also into the world--and human nature--in general), their good-hearted humor, and--above all--their passionate dedication to the magnanimous spirit of Jack London. I will return to these characteristics anon, after a few more words about my personal share of the Kingman legacy.
Although I had missed the January Banquet, I did manage to get to London Country the following summer. I was just finishing a month's work at the Huntington Library when Betty and our four children drove out from Louisiana to pick me up in the family station wagon. We headed north to visit our friends the Shepards up at the Jack London Ranch in the Valley of the Moon. Moreover, I wanted to shake hands personally with Russ, who had written to invite us to a soiree he and Winnie were hosting at their Oakland apartment on July 12. And what an illustrious gathering that was--a veritable Who's Who of Londoniana: Jack's daughter Becky (with her husband Percy Fleming), Tony Bubka (the sometime longshoreman and all-time London buff who had produced several articles along with a bibliography of London's Bay Area newspaper writings), Edwin B. (Bert) Erbentraut (Professor and London scholar from the College of Marin), Elsie Whitaker Martinez (daughter of Jack's friend and novelist Jim Whitaker and widow of Jack's friend and artist Xavier Martinez), Jim's son Laurie Whitaker, James E. Sisson of Berkeley (London researcher par excellence), and Franklin Walker (former Rhodes Scholar and current Reinhardt Professor of American Literature at Mills College [now deceased] who had published definitive studies of Jack London and Frank Norris).
It was also during that summer visit I met, through Russ, Richard Weiderman and Sal Noto. Dick was founder of the new Michigan press Wolf House Books, whose remarkable one-man enterprise would distinguish itself not only with reprints of scarce pieces of Londoniana like Martin Johnson's Through the South Seas with Jack London and William McDevitt's Jack London as Poet and Platform Man but also with such pioneering works as Dale Walker's The Alien Worlds of Jack London and James McClintock's White Logic.3 We had corresponded but not met personally before Russ got us together for a tour of "Jack London's Oakland," culminating at the site of what had once been the power plant of the Oakland Electric Railway, notoriously immortalized in John Barleycorn.4
Sal Noto was the Number One London Collector, who already possessed a magnificent full set of Jack London first editions in fine condition--with a healthy start on a second set. His knowledge of the collecting game was profound, and his enthusiasm was infectious. I myself had been accumulating London books for fifteen years, but it was Sal who initiated me into the fine art of collecting. Meeting him and Russ together was a singular instance of synchronicity, for Russ had just been delegated by Johnny Miller's widow to sell the set of first editions Jack had inscribed to his mother, Flora London. As a result, I had the extraordinary opportunity to acquire several of the unique "Dear Mama" books.5 That summer I became an inveterate London collector.
I mention these events because they reveal further significant facets of Russ Kingman's golden legacy. Like Malemute Kid in "To the Man on Trail," he had a rare genius for bringing individuals of all types and backgrounds together in their varied yet common interests in Jack London. And just as Malemute Kid served as high priest for the Northland Code, so Russ Kingman was destined to become the high priest for the Jack London Code and Coterie. Not long after the summer of '72, he and Winnie moved permanently into their Valley of the Moon, staking their modest fortune on the success of their new Jack London Bookstore and museum. It was a courageous venture sustained by fate as well as by faith. Their bookstore and museum, augmented by their establishment of the Jack London Foundation, was aptly named "The World of Jack London"--Joseph Campbell might call it "The World Navel of Londoniana"--and was destined to attract visitors, collectors, students, teachers, scholars, and media representatives from as near as Sonoma, Petaluma, and San Francisco, and from as far as Denmark, Russia, and Japan. In the same spirit of camaraderie, the annual Jack London Birthday Banquet, inaugurated by Russ in 1970, perennially attracted upwards of two hundred London aficionados (and aficionadas, for neither Jack's appeal nor Russ's message was gender-biased) from home and abroad to celebrate a genuine "love-feast." Beyond these activities, Russ was also ever the available speaker, ready and willing to preach the Gospel of Jack--at civic affairs, service clubs, schools--wherever two or more were gathered in London's name.
If the Kingman legacy were limited only to Russ's divinely appointed role as high priest of the London Code and master of manifold London ceremonies, his contributions would have been simply extraordinary. But he was also a first-rate scholar and an astute critic--the "Kritic of Critics," with the capital "K," as he liked to label himself, just to make sure he would not be confused with our run-of-the-mill academic breed. The last quarter-century of his life was unreservedly and indefatigably dedicated to his quest for the truth about Jack London. That quest involved the gathering of countless thousands of notes and related data. Moreover, his quest was informed by the same integrity that characterized his personal relationships. There was not one ounce of hypocrisy or pretense in his whole personality. The Russ you saw was the Russ you got: the real Russ Kingman. He epitomized the virtue Emerson described as "simplicity of character," although there was nothing simple about his protean intelligence. He never suffered fools--or foolish theories--gladly. He was a master of what Jack called "brass tacks straight talk." Whether the dialogue be face-to-face, letter-to-letter, expert-to-media, or writer-to-reader, he delivered his opinions straight from the shoulder without pulling his punches. Agree or disagree, you never had any doubts about where he stood.
Russ Kingman was at heart a poet, and, like all poets (those who love the aesthetics of the language as well as the excitement of new ideas), he was fond of puns. I think he would therefore forgive me if I bent the truth just enough to say that his Crowning scholarly achievement was his Pictorial Life of Jack London.6 It was the first genuinely reliable biography we've had, and now, fifteen years later, it is still the best. As Howard Lachtman perceptively observed in his review of the book, "In plain words and eloquent pictures (many of them heretofore unpublished), Kingman offers a healthy corrective to zealous 'interpreters' who have cast London into roles ranging from impossibly romantic hero to ludicrously neurotic misfit . . . . Kingman shows us the many faces of Jack London as the camera caught him--reading, writing, boxing, sailing, loving, lecturing and striking a multitude of poses. It's the next best thing to being in his company."7 I might merely add that knowing Russ Kingman was the next best thing to being in Jack London's company.
But even the considerable achievement of A Pictorial Life was not really Russ's ultimate scholarly legacy. Scarcely more than a year before his death--a true instance, if there ever was one, of Special Providence--he managed to complete his monumental London chronology, a synthesis of the myriad notes he had assiduously gathered over the past two decades. Here, at last, in one book was a veritable treasure-trove from which might be readily mined the data of Jack's activities from birth to death. "Jack London: A Definitive Chronology is essential reading for all sincerely interested in the true facts of the author's life," Tony Williams has affirmed. "The entries often contain invaluable information concerning daily events, dates of composition, publication appearances and log entries from Jack and Charmian's various voyages. Although the chronology mainly comprises a list of London's daily activities, interpretation of data is by no means absent. Sometimes more interpretation is needed. At other times, it is debatable. But the whole chronology lends itself to such rich interpretations now that we have the basic, reliable data at hand to consider and argue over."8 Russ would thoroughly approve the prospect of considering and arguing over those "basic, reliable data," for he was ever, among his other qualities, the available debater, chompin' at the bit for a good no-holds-barred, winner-take-all argument.
But Russ Kingman was ever, above all, the available humanitarian. I mentioned earlier the outstanding characteristics of his letters: honesty, wisdom, good humor, and magnanimity. These clearly bespoke the man himself. Great-hearted friend, counselor, and benefactor: his good will knew no limits. I think his favorite among all London quotations was the one from Jack's Introduction to Upton Sinclair's Cry for Justice:
It is so simple a remedy, merely service. Not one ignoble thought or act is demanded of any one of all men and women in the world to make fair the world. The call is for nobility of thinking, nobility of doing. The call is for service, and, such is the wholesomeness of it, he who serves all, best serves himself.9
Russ Kingman devoted his life to answering that call, and we are all the better served because he rendered it so eloquently for us. This golden rendition was his greatest legacy--and ours as well.
