‘Mr. Idyllwild’ remembered

By David Jerome
Correspondent

Idyllwilders were saddened to learn of the death Friday, Nov. 5, of Doug Austin. His over 20 years in Idyllwild have changed many lives for the better. His love for this community and his fellow humans was boundless, and his acts of generosity so numerous as to beggar written words.

Recently, he and Pat had moved off the Hill because of his failing health.

Doubtless his passing will engender many memorials, but the Crier must pay tribute to the best of our abilities. Those who knew him use words like “hero” and “gentleman.” For many of us he was the pinnacle, about eight steps above the others we think of as good.

Doug’s immersion in great literature started early. He recalled that his father made him read Shakespeare and other classics for a half-hour every night before he turned on the TV. “I didn’t realize the great value in that until I got to high school, taking English literature, because I knew all the characters.”

A stutterer from childhood, he found his “cure” through public speaking and theater. In high school he knew he wanted to be an actor. Afterward he completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in theater concurrently at California State, Los Angeles. The difficult financial realities of an actor’s life led him to pursue a more remunerative career, eventually becoming president of Hi Point Industries, a Land ’O Lakes company. His acting training did not go to waste, though, as the actor’s craft provides many lessons for his other roles.

Since his youth he had always wanted to live in the mountains. An employee invited him to Idyllwild and he “fell in love.” Doug and his wife Mary moved first to Idyllwild in 1986, but a promotion at work took him away from the Hill in 1989. In 1998, they returned to stay.

When he and Mary finished paying off the mortgage on their Idyllwild home, they continued to make “payments,” equal to the mortgage, but to an account set aside for philanthropy. Starting in 2001, donations began flowing out to individuals and groups, often anonymously.

His many philanthropic activities included the Mary Austin Memorial Award, given in conjunction with the Idyllwild Soroptimists, to women in the community in need. The Mary Austin Foundation also has funded in perpetuity nine grants through the Idyllwild Community Fund.

He served on the board of the Idyllwild Community Fund, where he acted as president but kept an arcanely modest title of his own invention. Fellow board member David Pelham described his leadership as “seminal.” He also was an Idyllwild Help Center board member.

In December 2003, he suffered a stroke, leaving him unable to speak for seven months. When he did begin to speak, his childhood stutter had returned, and was only lost through speech therapy and his return to theater and public speaking. Like every other adversity he met, he overcame, becoming stronger because of it and sharing his experiences along the road to recovery for the benefit of others. The Caine Learning Center hosted him for a lecture about his road to recovery, turning personal adversity into a teachable moment. This same commitment to helping those in grief and need motivated his sponsorship of a lecture series at Spirit Mountain called “Living Through Loss and Transition.”

In 2004, he initiated the Idyllwild School Charles Dickens Essay and Poster Contest, awarding scholarships up to $1,000 in conjunction with the Idyllwild Rotary Club. As a Rotarian, he exemplified their motto “service above self.” His advocacy for literacy through the smARTS program earned him an HUSD Good Apple Award twice.

After Mary died in 2009, he married Pat Murphy and with her, he was a sponsor of the Idyllwild Summer Concerts, and a memorable master of ceremonies there, and at so many local events, including the Earth Fair. At the Jazz in the Pines festival, his work making the visiting artists “at home” backstage earned him the moniker “Mr. Green Room.”

Idyllwild’s Holiday Tree Lighting Ceremony will not be the same without him. His theater groups, first the Dickens Players and later the Olde English Theatre Players, created an immersive performance experience for visitors during the holiday season. Free workshops brought volunteers up to speed on details of Victorian deportment, speech and dress. His public presentations, especially those in the role of Dickens, were unforgettable artistic and human events.

He was featured in the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) documentary series “The Leading Generation,” which followed the lives of retirees who reinvent themselves.

His local theater activity, like his philanthropy, often focused on literacy, specifically through the works of Dickens, whose themes of social injustice in Victorian England still resonate today. The goal was not mere academic literacy, but enriched humanity, by exposing students to Dickens’ core themes of social injustice and the hardship borne by those at the bottom of a stiflingly stratified social order.

His trademark mixture of love of mankind, energy, wit and theatrical skill brought us productions like his “Dickens, Douglass and Hope.” The play was an imaginative reenactment of Dickens’ meeting with African American intellectual giant and abolitionist Frederick Douglas. (In real life, Douglas published a serialization of Dickens’ “Bleak House” in his newspaper, and Dickens raised money to bring Douglass to England to speak.) Austin also spoke as Dickens on the subject of women’s suffrage and equal rights. His purpose was always to foster honor, decency and fairness in the treatment of all people.

With all these accomplishments in his life, Doug never hesitated when asked what he was most proud if: The act he took the most pride in was giving his wife (first Mary, and then Pat) a rose every single day. His attitude toward marriage was a microcosm of his view of life. His favorite quote: “One Clydesdale [horse] can pull 800 pounds. Two together can pull 2,400 pounds. If you’re in harmony with your partner you can do anything.”