This summer, during our Writers’ Workshop week, we received the devastating news that our friend Robin Radin had passed. We want to honor the life and legacy of our dear friend, Robin Radin.
A scholar of Japanese History, and a long-practicing lawyer, Robin was a scholar and a life-long student. He was particularly fascinated with Japan and Japanese-American Relations, traveling extensively in Japan. He was a lover of the arts, supporting our work as well as many arts programs in Florida and New York. Robin was 83.
We came to know Robin in a most unusual way.
In 1970, in a relatively empty valley, the first administrators of the Community of Writers were setting up chairs and workshop spaces. A man approached on a white horse, having made the short trek from his small cabin on National Forest land on the bank of the Truckee river. He had heard about this new Community of Writers and, a writer in his own right, wanted to learn more. Unable to pay, he offered his guitar as collateral to Joan Klaussen – a beloved local who helped to make the summer workshops happen for many decades. His name was Paul Radin, and his presence at our summer gatherings became legendary. Mysterious and solitary, with no formal role, he joined us nonetheless for readings and craft talks, and at dinners on the deck. For more than thirty years, he joined us each summer from then on.
So it was with some melancholy and some deep gladness that we discovered that we weren’t alone in our grieving for this free-spirited man. Indeed, his brothers David and Robin Radin, feeling around as we do in grief for connection, discovered us and our relationship to Paul.
The Radin Family became a part of our community. They were instrumental in galvanizing our Tiny House project, which we named in honor of their brother. Now, our summer book shop and stage is the Paul Radin Memorial Dream Wagon. We remember Paul each summer, and the wagon felt in keeping with the style of Paul’s arrival each summer on his white horse. A migratory creature, a moving literary and cultural ambassador.
As we close out the summer chapter of our work here at the Community of Writers, we are grieving Robin, and we are keeping his sweetheart, Georgia Court, in our thoughts. But we are also grateful for the complex events – going back more than fifty years – that led to our acquaintance. Robin did so much for us as a Community, and we will miss him tremendously, even as we enact his legacy through the Dream Wagon that he helped to envision. Thank you, Robin.
