Chris Smith: Healdsburg father to run marathon to honor his son

As Sunday’s Santa Rosa Marathon approaches, Healdsburg insurance man Andy Esquivel could easily have halted his painful training and said, “Maybe next year.”

Who’d blame him? Beyond the nagging pain in his knees and ankles, it wasn’t much more than a month ago that Andy was shattered by word that his truly extraordinary son, Drew, was struck and killed by a car in Brooklyn.

“When we lost Drew, I didn’t run for two weeks,” he said. He considered postponing his goal to run a marathon.

Then it came to him: His son Drew was not a quitter. At just 21, the 2013 Healdsburg High graduate had not earned acceptance at Cornell, Princeton, Stanford and other prestigious universities and accepted a full-ride scholarship to MIT, become an Eagle Scout and excelled at wrestling, dance and multiple other endeavors by giving up when the going got tough.

Said his dad, “I realized I would never forgive myself if I used him as an excuse to quit.”

So on Sunday morning he’ll be at the Santa Rosa Marathon starting line at Juilliard Park. Drew’s sisters, Emma and Elisabeth, will be there for the half-marathon.

The Esquivels also are honoring Drew by talking up a memorial scholarship fund created by Andy’s friends in the Rotary Club of Healdsburg Sunrise. You can learn more at rotaryclubofhealdsburgsunrise.org.

Andy said he and his wife, Susanne, and the girls, envision the scholarships going to students who, like Drew, aim high, work hard and seek not only to succeed but to serve and improve the lives of others.

And, it probably goes without saying, who don’t quit.

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A FIRE IN NORWAY badly injured retired Sebastopol teacher Judith Ashley, who went to Scandinavia to see a friend and now yearns to be home.

Family members say she was in the town of Skammestein when a propane tank in a summer camp exploded as she slept.

Judith was burned over 18 percent of her body, with the worst damage inflicted on her hands and a leg. Her family is making a crowdfunding appeal for help to pay her medical bills and fly her back to California.

The campaign is at gofundme.com/helpjudithashley.

I spoke with Judith upon the death of her remarkable mother, Carol “Kay” McCabe, in 2014. Kay was a Quaker and activist who in 1959 took in Melba Joy Pattillo, one of the black teenagers marked for death by the Ku Klux Klan for opposing segregation in Arkansas as one of the Little Rock Nine.

Judith’s dad, late educator George McCabe, is regarded by many as the father of Sonoma State University.

Many in these parts will be happy for Judith to be back home, and healing.

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SHE LOVED SPARKY but ultimately a scarlet-haired young Minnesota beauty chose to marry another.

Sixty-plus years ago, Donna Mae Johnson told budding cartoonist Charles Schulz she was sorry, but she’d chosen another suitor. Sparky moved on, but immortalized her as the Little Red-Haired Girl whom Charlie Brown adored from afar.

Donna Johnson Wold was 87 when she died on Aug. 9 in Richfield, Minn. She and her husband, Allan Wold, had raised a family and taken in scores of foster babies.

One she named Schroeder. Another, Lucy.

Chris Smith is at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.