Zyg Deutschman
1933-2024
Three years before Zyg Deutschman was born, his father graduated from Politechnic in Geneva, landed a job with the World Health Organization, and was sent to Singapore. There he met, wooed and married Zyg’s mother, who had moved from Mauritius after her father died and was working at the American Embassy. The newlyweds moved back to Geneva, the seat of the WHO and Zyg was born at 9:05 AM on the 1st day of May in 1933 at L’Hospital Contonal in Geneva.
“At home we spoke French, but my parents also spoke English and Malay. In 1940, after Poland was invaded, Father sent all of us to France where he thought we would be safer. He was Polish and worked at the League of Nations, where word was that Switzerland was next on Hitler’s Hit List. But the Nazi generals had their 401(k) plans in Switzerland and thought better of endangering their account balances. Nevertheless Father stayed behind in Geneva and the rest of the family moved to my uncle’s house in Brittany. Six weeks later the British went through town with the Germans in hot pursuit. Mother was a formidable lady who got us out of there and back to Geneva. Six months after that we sold everything, just like in the Fiddler on the Roof, and left for New York via Free France and Barcelona. We were on the Sudat De Seville, one of the last ships to make it out to the States.”
Once in America Zyg’s family moved from New York to Long Island to Montreal and back to New York and Washington, D.C. In 1946 his father started working for the UN again and took his family back to the Geneva seat of the World Health Organization. Zyg went to school at the International School of Geneva.
Soon after his eighteenth birthday, Zyg packed his bags and went out into the world to seek his fortune, first to a men’s college, Bouldin in Maine, then to San Francisco City College and after that to UC Berkeley. “When I ran out of scholarship money I quit college and joined the US Army, to defend the Western World. I enlisted two days before the end of the Korean War and became a true American. I had been Polish and then stateless till then. I was sent to the land of the Huns in a garrison town in Northern Franconia between Bamberg and Wartberg, none other than Schweinfurt on the Main. There I worked senselessly to disabuse our troops, enlighten them as to why we were there. I was a troop information NCO.”
After his campaign along the Main and in Southern Germany, Zyg retired as Regimental Historian and went back to Berkeley for a degree in Architecture. After the free Speech campaign with Mario Savio, he got a job at Mare Island in Vallejo buildings atomic submarines. “But Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies were so odious to me that I quit the Naval Shipyard, and joined a commune in Berkeley. It was the House of Love, a group of Catholic students, who went down to Central Mexico for three months in the summer as Community Developers. In Morilia, the Capital of Michoacan, I helped design schools in the Officiao de Planification Eurban..”
When Zyg got back to the Bay Area he started working to urbanize America through the miracles of city planning in Berkeley, rising from assistant planning director to associate planning director to planning director. “My wisdom was to Europeanize towns, the City Manager’s idea was urban sprawl. I was fired and all the doors were shut in the field of planning. While working as a City Planner I went to night school and got a MA in Fine Arts, to try my hand at teaching. But alas I was not a woman nor minority enough to get a teaching job, so I went back to school and got a General Contractors license and started remodeling homes. I remodeled when the sun shone and taught math and history when it rained.”
Zyg met the love of my life, Carol, got married and raised his stepson Zedrin. When the building scaffolds got too hard to climb, he went back to school to learn AutoCad, computer drafting. “The classes were hard, my fellow students were a third my age, and my marriage fell apart. I got a job designing landfills. My wife ran off with an engineer. Twenty years later I am single again and still working for the garbage company after an acrimonious divorce.” When Zyg started dancing with BFD, he met Sue Fernstrom on the dance floor “and she has helped me rebuild my broken life.” Now, every other year Zyg goes dancing on the water with Mel Mann or visits his cousins in the South of France.
“My life has been compartmentalized between my book club friends, Newman Hall Catholic Choir, Charismatic Prayer Singing Group, BFD, ushering with friends from Berkeley Rep, Catholic Worker who feed the Homeless, the hiking and kayaking friends and my fellow coworkers at the office. I think that in a year or two I will retire and write limericks and make sculptures in clay. ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”
“At home we spoke French, but my parents also spoke English and Malay. In 1940, after Poland was invaded, Father sent all of us to France where he thought we would be safer. He was Polish and worked at the League of Nations, where word was that Switzerland was next on Hitler’s Hit List. But the Nazi generals had their 401(k) plans in Switzerland and thought better of endangering their account balances. Nevertheless Father stayed behind in Geneva and the rest of the family moved to my uncle’s house in Brittany. Six weeks later the British went through town with the Germans in hot pursuit. Mother was a formidable lady who got us out of there and back to Geneva. Six months after that we sold everything, just like in the Fiddler on the Roof, and left for New York via Free France and Barcelona. We were on the Sudat De Seville, one of the last ships to make it out to the States.”
Once in America Zyg’s family moved from New York to Long Island to Montreal and back to New York and Washington, D.C. In 1946 his father started working for the UN again and took his family back to the Geneva seat of the World Health Organization. Zyg went to school at the International School of Geneva.
Soon after his eighteenth birthday, Zyg packed his bags and went out into the world to seek his fortune, first to a men’s college, Bouldin in Maine, then to San Francisco City College and after that to UC Berkeley. “When I ran out of scholarship money I quit college and joined the US Army, to defend the Western World. I enlisted two days before the end of the Korean War and became a true American. I had been Polish and then stateless till then. I was sent to the land of the Huns in a garrison town in Northern Franconia between Bamberg and Wartberg, none other than Schweinfurt on the Main. There I worked senselessly to disabuse our troops, enlighten them as to why we were there. I was a troop information NCO.”
After his campaign along the Main and in Southern Germany, Zyg retired as Regimental Historian and went back to Berkeley for a degree in Architecture. After the free Speech campaign with Mario Savio, he got a job at Mare Island in Vallejo buildings atomic submarines. “But Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam policies were so odious to me that I quit the Naval Shipyard, and joined a commune in Berkeley. It was the House of Love, a group of Catholic students, who went down to Central Mexico for three months in the summer as Community Developers. In Morilia, the Capital of Michoacan, I helped design schools in the Officiao de Planification Eurban..”
When Zyg got back to the Bay Area he started working to urbanize America through the miracles of city planning in Berkeley, rising from assistant planning director to associate planning director to planning director. “My wisdom was to Europeanize towns, the City Manager’s idea was urban sprawl. I was fired and all the doors were shut in the field of planning. While working as a City Planner I went to night school and got a MA in Fine Arts, to try my hand at teaching. But alas I was not a woman nor minority enough to get a teaching job, so I went back to school and got a General Contractors license and started remodeling homes. I remodeled when the sun shone and taught math and history when it rained.”
Zyg met the love of my life, Carol, got married and raised his stepson Zedrin. When the building scaffolds got too hard to climb, he went back to school to learn AutoCad, computer drafting. “The classes were hard, my fellow students were a third my age, and my marriage fell apart. I got a job designing landfills. My wife ran off with an engineer. Twenty years later I am single again and still working for the garbage company after an acrimonious divorce.” When Zyg started dancing with BFD, he met Sue Fernstrom on the dance floor “and she has helped me rebuild my broken life.” Now, every other year Zyg goes dancing on the water with Mel Mann or visits his cousins in the South of France.
“My life has been compartmentalized between my book club friends, Newman Hall Catholic Choir, Charismatic Prayer Singing Group, BFD, ushering with friends from Berkeley Rep, Catholic Worker who feed the Homeless, the hiking and kayaking friends and my fellow coworkers at the office. I think that in a year or two I will retire and write limericks and make sculptures in clay. ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”