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Leland Stark’s Obituary
By Bill Dittmann
Lee Stark was one of my very best friends. He and I were in different classes during our elementary years at Havens School in Piedmont, California, but we were definitely acquainted from the time that my family moved close to his. He was perhaps the smartest person I have ever known. By the time we were in the sixth grade we joined Troop 5 of the Boy Scouts. This was a very difficult time in both of our lives. We both suffered from being excluded by the popular gang of boys who basically ran the social life at Havens and later Piedmont Junior High School.
We lived just a block from each other and liked to talk endlessly through the fence during many evenings about the social situation at school as well as our wishes and dreams growing up. I remember helping to set a romantic date with an older very beautiful young student friend of mine. We hung out elsewhere: in the Scouts, the classes we shared, and at family dinners. We played tennis on weekends at Bette Beechen’s (now Epstein) house up the street and belonged to the same social service groups at Piedmont High. Later we formed our own study group in which great ideas were discussed, especially ethnic discrimination, racism, and antisemitism.
Lee decided to leave the Bay Area after graduating from Piedmont High. With very high expectations of success he decided to enroll at UCLA. We compared notes frequently about our experiences in Southern California and I was certainly proud of his success in school. He decided to enter medical school at UCSF. My wife Barbara and I visited him and other friends many times, with Brad Lee and Bob Kagan during this time in our lives during the middle Sixties at their apartment on Twin Peaks in San Francisco, but Lee decided to switch back to Los Angeles and become a lawyer. At this point he established his practice exclusively in the LA region and ceased to return to the Bay Area for personal reasons around 1975. We lost track of each other at that point.
Although I have not recently kept up with him, I want to wish his sister, Merilee ,my love and b best wishes
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Shel Milligan
Bill Dittmann and Gay Schrag had lunch recently with Leland's sister, Marilee. Following that lunch Marilee shared the following poem that she wrote. It is a very moving tribute to Leland and the refound relationship of a brother and sister. Bill asked that it be shared. I am happy to do so.
I've attached a poem I wrote about my initial experience finding Leland. Fortunately, we went on to spend the best year and a half together after this encounter- it was like no time had passed and we were back to being kids again with no worries and only time to have fun. I am so grateful for this.
Marilee Stark
Rescue
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
little sister taking care of big brother.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
watching my big brother
shuffle through his home
in disarray after months of neglect and grief.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
finding unopened boxes
addressed to my brother’s spouse, 45 years
no longer there to open them.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
calling multiple mental health facilities,
HIPAA in the way of finding him.
He’d called me confused, unable to say where he was.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
rescuing my brother’s beloved dog from animal control,
after 23 days of searching
for my brother and his dog.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
discovering boxes of client files
in my brother’s home office
with no internet and bills piled high.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way,
suits still hanging waiting to go to court
ties of all colors, many from Mom,
draped over racks waiting to be worn.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way
a lifelong dream, gone.
no longer able to be
the attorney he loved.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
my older brother greeting me at his door
wispy, long grey hair, tired brown eyes,
wrinkled shirt
pants too big for his belt to hold.
“Who did you say you were again?”
“Marilee.”
Tears washed down my little sister face.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Bradford Lee
With fond memories of my junior and senior years of my close friendship with Lee at PHS, playing tennis on weekends and time spent together socializing intellectually with Bill Dittmann, et al., and participating at school functions and numerous committees, I mourned the loss of that special boyhood connection we had shared together after he left the Bay Area to practice law in Southern California. Despite many attempts to visit him over the ensuing years and to contact him by phone, he stayed distant and aloof, somehow afraid to engage in mere conversation. I suspected a personality change and left it at that, but never stopped calling, but to no avail
In tribute to Marilee's beautiful and heart wrenching poem of Rescue, I understand the immense bereavement she endured for all those years of losing her brother, psychically, intellectually, mentally, and spiritually, way before his body gave out. I am saddened for this ultimate loss and how it may have affected each of us in its own way.
I share with you this recent & timely WSJ article that poignantly demonstrates the challenges that family and friends face when a loved one suffers from a mental illness, no differently than that of a physical ailment. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/homeless-california-mental-illness-care-court-f63d2027
Steve Garrison
Oh, my goodness. The poem so clearly showin Lee's diminishing capability. I became his friend when he reached out to me in 8th grade when we moved to Piedmont from Hawaii. He was a good early friend, when it was hard to connect at PJHS as a newcomer. He did; I am grateful.
However, we did lose touch, even though I tried, living in Southern California, to connect when he was there. No real success.
Friends, thank you for sharing. those years were precious.
Aloha, from Kona, our now nearly permanent home.