Tom D’Onofrio, Bolinas, California community activist and singular wood sculptor, dies at 73

Mr. D’Onofrio’s life was framed by a spiritual life, that on one hand, was deeply personal and, on the other, was rooted in a faith in the collective. He often said he believed that “individuals who developed their inner creative spirit experience a ‘Renaissance of Consciousness’ that affects not only the individual, but also society.”

He grew up in our small community of Saranac Lake, nestled in the high peaks of the Adirondack Mountains and surrounded by lakes and rivers. At the age of 13, with the indelible impression of one of his grandmother’s romantic paintings of a log cabin alongside a lake in mind, he decided he wanted to recreate that scene.

His parents, Julia and Thomas, must have been startled by the prospect of their young son building a log cabin in the forest surrounding a near-by lake, but also saw the passion in his eyes, and rather than discourage his dreams, gave their consent, and support. Unfortunately, his first effort had to be torn down, when the chief of police discovered he had built on state land. Yet Tom’s dream was so infectious and genuine, he was quickly gifted a small lakefront plot on the other side of Lake Colby. With his savings earned from delivering the local paper as well as performing odd jobs for neighbors, he was able to buy used wood at highly discounted prices. Dozens of men ferried the lumber across the lake, and then helped him build an improved cabin as well. He lovingly named the cabin the “Hermitage,” where he would spend countless days and nights, not only while in high school, but also as a Spiritual retreat throughout his life. It was a transformative moment for Tom, and contained numerous lessons that informed other transitions in his life.

Tom graduated from Saranac Lake High School in 1958 with a life-long love for playing the saxophone. He never passed on the opportunity to join with others and “simply jam” the night away. The archetype of the artist is embedded with sound, the vibrations of the heavens. After two years at the local college, Paul Smith’s, the crucible of the “log-cabin” metaphor needed to be enlarged, so Tom elected to become a Methodist minister and left to attend West Virginia Wesleyan College.

1966 was a year of great change, as he became an ordained Methodist minister, married his college sweetheart, Barbara Cole, and decided to enter the doctoral program in theology at Berkeley University. Their son, Philip, was born soon after they settled in Berkeley. Serendipitously, Berkeley was the home of the Free Speech Movement that by now had grown to include the anti-war movement, on campus political activism, and community mobilization.

Tom loved to tell the story of his first day of classes, when, from the moment he turned onto to University Avenue, to a short time later, as he reached the classroom, the radical Berkeley culture would have already upended his “Eastern” conservatism. Dressed in what he imagined to be a “proper” suit with a distinguishing-looking lit pipe clenched loosely in his mouth, he turned on to University Avenue just as a bare-breasted young girl brushed into him attempting to avoid a collision. In the few blocks he had to walk, somewhat in a dazed state, Tom discovered that in her style of dress, or lack there of, she was far from alone. Then he reached the campus and heard the voice of Mario Savio, the founder of the Free Speech Movement, mesmerizing an over-flowing crowd of excited listeners; he was hypnotic. As Tom listened, he instinctively identified with Savio’s message: “resist becoming a cog in somebody’s machine.” It was if an earthquake had shaken Tom’s inner world: Tom was becoming transformed forever.

After attending the required graduate seminar with his wife, Barbara, they mutually concluded they were incompatible. Despite having an infant son, they separated and later divorced. Philip left with his “conservative” – as Tom now saw her – Mother, returning to the East, and Tom took a sabbatical, intending to return to school, but for now needed money to pay the accumulating bills. He soon took a high paying job working the night shift digging the BART tunnel under the San Francisco Bay. (Tom would eventually complete the requirements to earn his master’s degree.)

When he could carve out a few precious hours, Tom drove to the small seaside community of Bolinas, “famed for its reclusive residents;” perfect for the reclusive side of Tom that yearned for simplicity and peace. In a propitious photograph he posted online many years later, he is seen standing aside a sports car, looking very James Dean like, parked on Bolinas Mesa, with its golden fields giving rise to the open hills and woods beyond.

In 1968, he made the life-altering decision to move. He soon sold his sports car and bought a funky flatbed truck, more valuable to an aspiring wood worker. When he learned that a worker of Arthur “Art” Espenet Carpenter, the famous furniture maker, had left, he successfully talked himself into a job and two year apprenticeship. They would become life-long friends.

The two years passed quickly and Tom now needed to find his own clients and, maybe more importantly, his personal form of artistic expression. Before long, a friend introduced Tom to Paul Kantner and Grace Slick, of the Jefferson Airplane, who had just moved to Bolinas. Seeing they lacked a formal dining table, Tom proposed building them one. It was to incorporate dragons on the corners. They agreed with the only stipulation being it had to be made of rosewood. It proved to be an artistic windfall. He drove to South San Francisco and visited the best lumberyard and loaded his truck up with the hard to find rosewood. Back at his first studio, he began designing and preparing the rosewood for his first table, one distinctly different than anything art carpenter had ever crafted.

Then, in January 1971, came an alarming early morning voice over the radio, sounding scared, and reporting a giant oil slick was being swept up towards Bolinas and might possibly threaten the irreplaceable ecosystem of the Bolinas Lagoon. He knew it was only a narrow channel that flowed between Bolinas Beach and Kent Island protecting the pristine estuary. From years of driving the road bordering the Lagoon, and seeing migrating birds stopping to rest and forage for small fish and shellfish in the shallow waters, amongst the reeds and grasses, or the permanent residents the shorebirds and waterfowl, gulls terns, coots, herons, egrets, grebes, cormorants, loons and kingfishers.

Tom knew them all by name as if he were back on Lake Colby. But there were more than birds. Harbor seals could always be found taking a daytime nap, resting on warm, exposed sand bars, replenishing the oxygen their muscles needed, to evade the Great White sharks that roamed just outside in the cold Pacific Ocean.

Tom bolted awake. Just get up and act! And he did. He began telephoning friends, one by one. It had to be a BIG project. Two tall logs to be stood upright in deep holes anchoring the logs forming the barrier across the inlet and restraining the straw that would absorb the oil. And it had to be done now, with competent and committed people whom they trusted. Tom then signed off with “meet you on the beach.” Tom not only raised the alarm, he lead the effort, staying overnight, struggling in unwilling waters with others, straining exhausted arms against logs and cables, and incoming freezing waves and always the wind. His body and mind became fused with the age-old lesson that crises can source hope and community. Their success became publically acknowledged. The unincorporated community learned to trust itself, rather than distant government or corporations. Tom proved to be a unique community activist sculpting social action, just as he was the wood of the neophyte sculptor, not just a wood worker.

Tom kept turning over his recent experiences and began envisioning how the ideas of the Middle-Age craft guilds could be used to create employment and training for the numerous artisans living in Bolinas, and elsewhere. He began to spend less time with his tools and machines and in his shop and more on the phone and meeting with people. Tom knew he could make this vision real and would. In 1972, Tom founded the Baulines Crafts Guild. He agreed to not take a salary until they secured grants and achieved non-profit status. It became one of the centerpieces of his life and a permanent institution. (Thousands of craftsmen have been trained and interconnected in self-reinforcing networks.)

As meaningful as the Guild was, Tom had to get back earning a living. He was frustrated from not exploring his inner creativity and sculpting. Then there was the Rosewood table to finish, and he had to acknowledge he was facing the well-known artistic block. But he could finish the top and he did. He invited Kantner and Slick to see it, and “they loved it.” Confessing his artistic sensibilities may have become too grand, they decided to change the design to a coffee table with one dragon, not four. They advanced him more money then left excited. Nonetheless, Tom struggled to complete the table design. He delved into his overflowing bookcase and various libraries, journalized his dreams endlessly, prayed daily to the Almighty and returned for retreats to Lake Colby. He created lots of possible designs but none worthy of “his” table. He took other work to pay the bills and keep him active in his workshop, including an organic wine rack that would be pictured in Newsweek magazine. Then on Aug. 30, 1976, Tom had an epiphany. Frustrated and exhausted, he saddled his daily companion, the white Appaloosa, White Cloud, and galloped to Agate Beach, a frequent escape. There he encountered a friend, and as they aimlessly wandered along the beach, they suddenly saw a giant sea serpent in the rolling waves. His inner creativity had birthed an image, a design, and it felt both real and burned into his senses. He leapt onto White Cloud and raced to his studio where he finished the design in a matter of days. He knew he had created a masterpiece, a one of a kind sculpture that will stand the test of time.

Kantner and Slick “love it.” He asked them if he might keep the Rose Dragon Table to do some valuable marketing. As artists they likely understood and agreed. The fusion of the unconscious into form captured the imagination of others. The story of D’Onofrio, the sighting of the Sea Serpent and the Rose Dragon Table were written about in local papers, made the focus of television specials and by September 1977 graced the cover of National Geographic magazine. With his creative energy freed up, Tom had time to take more commissions and to create designs he owned. One of his principal patrons commissioned what becomes another powerful sculpture – a giant Bull and Bear. It too found fame, including being showcased at the Pacific Stock Exchange seven times. His signature design of a dolphin soaring through the waves, with water rippling down its body, captures the essence of energy and movement. These pieces, and dozens of others, create a body of work that will forever secure his reputation as a powerful and singular wood sculptor.

In the late 1980s, Tom’s relationship with Dragon energy spawned a more personal form of love, when he met Claire Simeone, a woman every bit his equal. They married in 1991 and vacationed in Bali before backpacking in Nepal and finally resting on the warm beaches of Thailand. They returned home excited and energized. Then, disaster struck when a fire swept through his studio leveling space and destroying tools and machines. However hard he worked to recreate the scene of his great carvings, it was not to be. His artistic life had been defined. But not his family and community life, for in 1993 Claire gave birth to their first daughter, Ciarra.

In 1994, he was asked to lead the Annual Sun Festival and Baby Blessing Ceremony; a perfect role for a former minister and community activist. For 20 years, Tom mastered that role, always saying the “babies were blessing the community, not being blessed.” In 1996, Claire gave birth to their second wonderful daughter, Colby. Then the uncertainty of Tom’s professional life became too stressful for Claire and her concern for their daughters and they divorced in 2005.

In the spring of 2015, after a particularly challenging winter at Lake Colby, Tom traveled to Portland, Oregon to attend Ciarra’s college graduation ceremonies where an alarmed family saw him for the first time in months.

Once he returned to California, his family encouraged him to check into a hospital. He was exhausted and hardly recognizable; being both gaunt and frequently not lucid. After weeks of trying to recover his strength and determine what was wrong with him, Tom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had metastasized.

Tom understood the implications. The loss of appetite encouraged him to stop eating. He refused drugs, and was released to Hospice care where his family and a few friends could love the man who meant so much to them. He never complained, railed against the injustice of it all, was sad or appeared sorry for himself. He was brave to the end, dying but a month after being diagnosed.

Tom’s survivors include his son Philip and wife Ilena and granddaughter Desi; two daughters: Ciarra and Colby; and a younger sister, Sharon D’Onofrio.