Chris Smith: Sonoma West Medical Center benefactors closing Sebastopol restaurant

IN SEBASTOPOL, the hilltop French Garden Restaurant & Bistro Bar braces for shutdown by owners Dan Smith and Joan Marler-Smith, whose philanthropy has been important to many nonprofit endeavors and essential to the still uncertain revival of the former Palm Drive Hospital.

The Smiths' decision to shutter the French Garden on June 26 follows, and is not coincidental to, the disclosure by the treasurer of the Sonoma West Medical Center that the reborn hospital can't repay the couple's $5.7 million loan.

The Smiths have said they will forgive the loan. But the loss of the nearly $6 million forces them to cut back.

Thus the demise of the French Garden, which the couple has said was not intended to be a money-maker. It hosted many benefit dinners, performances, and discussions of local and world issues.

The former home of the infamous Marty's Top of the Hill bar had sat empty for a good long time when Smith and his wife, on one of their upswings, transformed it into the gracious farm-to-table dining room and bar that opened in 2006.

The evening of the 26th, the French Garden will conclude with a prix fixe dinner and music by Nina Gerber and Chris Webster and some of their friends. You can make a reservation by calling the restaurant.

Joan Marler-Smith said she's sad but she and her husband still will have much to do once the French Garden is gone.

“One of our problems,” she said, “was probably that we had too many things going at once.”

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THIRTEEN REASONS WHY is the title of a best-selling book that a starry, starry film team is about to make into a Netflix series at the classic campus of Sebastopol's Analy High.

Paramount TV and Netflix are right now sprucing up the 108-year-old school, planting fresh landscaping and painting two classrooms.

Filming is to begin Friday on the screen adaption of Jay Asher's acclaimed 2007 book, “Thirteen Reasons Why.” The young person's novel reveals the 13 taped messages that bullied student Hannah Baker made for classmates before she took her life.

The screenplay is by Brian Yorkey, who won a Pulitzer and a Tony for his work on the musical, “Next to Normal.” A producer of the 13-part series is Disney star Selena Gomez.

And the director is who? Tom McCarthy, whose “Spotlight” last year won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Analy Principal Chris Heller says having the TV production crew do its thing on campus has been a bit of a disruption, but “it's been a nice disruption.”

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FRIDAY MORNING, a casket bearing the remains of Healdsburg-reared U.S. Marine John Saini will be escorted from SFO to Santa Rosa.

I'm looking forward to riding along, and I'll tweet the motorcade's progress @CJSPD.

Saini, a Healdsburg High graduate, was killed on the first day of the Battle of Tarawa on Nov. 20, 1943. He and 34 other Marines were buried in a battlefield grave that went undiscovered until volunteers with History Flight, Inc. found it on the Tarawa Atoll islet of Betio just a year ago.

People wishing to welcome him home may stand along and on overpasses above Highway 101. The escorted hearse is expected to leave the airport between 10:30 and 11 a.m. and arrive at Eggen & Lance Chapel on Mendocino Avenue between noon and 1 p.m.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @CJSPD.