Many of the people who died along the North Coast in 2013 were, as is generally expected, older — among them Pat Wiggins, 73, Jesse Love, 91, and Jim Grady, 77 — and so their passings prompted reviews of their many decades engaged in living.
But others died tragically young. The deaths of Alyssa Byrne, 19, and Hope Sega, 18, were excruciating reminders of the dearness of life and how final youthful error can be.
The October death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, shot dead on Moorland Avenue by a sheriff's deputy, grieved and enraged the community, with many residents taking to the streets in protest of the deputy's use of deadly force.
Some deaths, like that of banker Dave Brown, 53, rattled industries. Others, like that of winemaker of Jim Barrett, 86, summoned memories of landmark achievement.
Death also occurred at society's margins. At least two people who had long been homeless died on local streets, Anatolio Barocio, 58, and James Wood, 60 — shoving to the fore life's hardness.
Sometimes death can knit a community more tightly.
"The larger culture has celebrated individuals to such a degree that people don't celebrate how connected we are. And it's quite clear that when people lose people, that they become aware of their connections," said Kathy Charmaz, a Sonoma State University sociologist.
"I think we tend to deny and minimize our connections to community," said Charmaz, who teaches a course titled Death and American Culture. "In that way, recognizing the lives of people who have died, whether they are known to many or just a few, is important."
In the early hours of 2013, Alyssa Byrne of Petaluma, 19, a Casa Grande High School graduate known for her fierce wit and lacrosse skills, died in a Tahoe snowbank after wandering off alone after a concert. Friends said she had been drinking and methamphetamine was later found in her system. Her parents launched a public awareness campaign urging young people to look out for one another to keep danger at bay.
In January, George Snyder of Occidental, a chronicler of his community, and an avid campaigner for the outdoors, died. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter, Snyder, a tall black man of American Indian ancestry who liked to wear a cowboy hat, was 68.
In January, too, the region's banking industry was shocked by the death of Dave Brown. The Bank of Marin executive, who had been in the business for three decades, 17 of those years with Exchange Bank, was found dead on his front porch. He was 53.
An Italian who became a proud American, Tony Vicini, the co-owner of Los Robles Lodge, the now-vanished remnant of Santa Rosa's past, died in January, at age 82, 6? years after his hotel and restaurant shut and joined history.
Death silenced an icon of Sonoma County's airwaves, Jim Grady, in February. The longtime KSRO and KZST radio host, a born ad-libber who greeted morning listeners for five decades, was 77.
Raymond Castro helped transform SSU's Mexican-American Studies program into what would become the Chicano and Latin Studies Department. He invested himself in steering Latino students through college, calling those who dropped out to urge them to return. He was 64 when he died in February.
Healdsburg resident Cliff Melim, who watched Japanese fighters fly over his Honolulu home to attack Pearl Harbor and then joined the Army, died in March. A developer and winemaker, he helped rally the 1990s effort to save Healdsburg Hospital from closure. He was 87 when he died in that hospital.
Hope Sega, 18, remembered as a vibrant Elsie Allen High School graduate who loved to arrange events for friends, died in March, too — in a homeless camp. She had been inhaling nitrous oxide. Her death led a friend to kick a drug habit, and her mother now works to make teenagers aware of how deadly common inhalants can be.
Winemaker Jim Barrett's death in March, stirred recollections of a 1976 triumph. That year his chardonnay topped five French wines in a blind tasting in Paris, swiftly elevating Napa Valley's profile in the world of wine. The owner of Chateau Montelena was 86.
A former football player recruited by the pros, Hugh "Wes" Mitchell solidly backed his wife Hazel Mitchell through her 45 years of coastal activism, and at the same time became a respected Bodega Bay builder and volunteer fireman. Mitchell died in April at age 84.
Known as "the singing actress," Claramae Turner loosed her big contralto voice with the San Francisco Opera, in venues including Carnegie Hall, and most memorably, perhaps, in a rendition of "You'll Never Walk Alone" in the 1956 film "Carousel." Turner died in Santa Rosa in May at the age of 92.
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