Chris Smith: This fire survivor expresses his gratitude with paint, brushes

Hank Schreeder, Santa Rosa’s chief of police, was running from one thing to another and was quite surprised when, about a week into the firestorm crisis, a fellow asked to snap his photograph as he was in his car and headed to the county Emergency Operations Center.

Schreeder had forgotten that moment when, last week, the nicest thing happened. The man who’d taken his photo, John Deckert, presented him a strikingly true oil-painting portrait of himself.

Clearly touched, the chief said, “It’s a picture of me, but ultimately it represents all of the work that was done” during and after the fires.

Deckert painted portraits, also from photographs, of Sonoma County Sheriff Rob Giordano, Santa Rosa Fire Chief Tony Gossner and Ken Pimlott, the director of Cal Fire.

“It was something from the heart he wanted to do for all of us,” Gossner said.

Deckert is an ex-Long Island volunteer firefighter and Marine Corps reservist who came to Santa Rosa five years ago with his wife, Anne. The fall fires chased them from their home in Rincon Valley but didn’t burn it.

As evacuees, they were treated well. “We were deeply grateful and I needed an outlet for that gratitude,” John Deckert said. He looked to his art.

He painted portraits of children to replace ones lost to the fires. He came upon a woman mourning the death of a pet parrot, and he borrowed a photo of the bird and created an oil portrait of it.

While at an evacuation center, Deckert gave parents the pen- and ink-wash portraits he’d made of their children.

He presented the commander of the local National Guard battalion a watercolor of soldiers he’d met as they guarded neighborhoods.

Says the artist, “Everyone that we encountered during the fires was helpful, generous and genuinely kind. I simply wanted to show them how deeply they were appreciated.”

Some recipients of his art-as-gratitude eagerly await walls to hang it on.

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GORDON TO A TEE: That wasn’t a ball that was sliced at 8 a.m. Monday at the first tee of Oakmont’s East golf course. It was a birthday cake.

The slicer and honoree was Gordon Hopper, a World War II pilot and retired accountant who was an ever-present legend at the over-55 community’s par-63 golf course until just three months ago, when the game at last became too much for him.

Gordon turned 100 on Saturday. To mark the milestone, his pals in the weekly Monday Men’s Niners tournament asked him to come join them and to play only as many holes as he could or cared to.

The gang cheered the lanky, genial centenarian. He cut the cake, then the golfers sang “Happy Birthday” as he prepared to drive from the first tee.

“I’m gonna try to make nine holes,” Gordon said. As it turned out, finishing just that first hole took some bearing down, but finish it he did.

Tales flowed of the joy and determination he’s brought to the Oakmont links for 30-plus years. Tony D’Agosta recalled the day that Gordon fell and stayed down after stroking a ball onto a green.

Firefighters and ambulance medics arrived and lifted him, telling him they’d get him to a hospital to be checked out.

“Oh, no,” he instructed them. “I have to putt out!”

And he did.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.