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Judy Ruiz-Verhoek sent us the following:
This is regarding Gary Key who passed away. There is a beautiful panel in the Names Project Quilt for a Gary Arthur Key, made by his mother. It's featured on page 75 of a book, The Quilt, Stories From the Names Project by Cindy Ruskin. The panel says "Gary Arthur Key, July 14, 1952 - February 26, 1986, Hayward, California. It also says "only son" "red-head" "pianist" "bird watcher" "jogger" "attorney" and more. Of the thousands of panels in that quilt, it's quite an honor that this one is in such a stirring book.
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Steve Schley
If the story is true, Gary was the first of us to pass away, doing so on graduation night. I’m not sure who Gary’s closest friends were back then and I hope someone else can come forth and give us a clearer memory. I found a long entry that he wrote into my junior yearbook and his face and personality came back clear to me.For me, Gary was my first experience in talking to someone whose ideological views differed dramatically from those I had been raised with and at this young age had internalized. He viewed himself as a far left-winger and enjoyed teasingly calling me a fascist. He seemed to turn a number of people off because he always seemed ready and available for an argument about the social injustices, regardless of what the conversations going on were all about. We shared a few classes over the years and once you got past that rebel with a cause, he had a pretty decent sense of humor.
Sadly he never got a chance to see where his views would take him. As most of us have tended to get more conservative over the years it would have been interesting to me to see where time would have taken him. I think he would have also enjoyed the fact that I never became the fascist he called me, but moved just a bit closer to him.
Gregory Slatoff
Steve, your account of Gary's passing is incorrect, though I admit hearing the same story. My "Gary" story is as follows:At Berkeley my girlfriend was a music major with perfect pitch which I viewed as amazing. She said it was no big deal compared with her classmate Gary Key. She confirmed he was a big red haired guy who moonlighted as the organist for the Congragational Church which was around the corner from my co-op, Barrington Hall. Thereafter on my way home from class I would linger by the church to hear him practice on the organ. It was a huge, haunting and beautiful sound. Who knew that "shy Gary" was so deep and gifted ? Even then my mind ran to the image of some Phantom of the Opera (a shy genius who came alive in a dark grand space). We never spoke and I never stopped in.
Several years later I was in law school in San Francisco and bumped into Gary on the Muni. He had not changed. I introduced myself and we went and had coffee. He was studying law at Golden Gate University. He confirmed that he was, in fact, the organist in Berkeley. Apparently he was a musical prodigy. I asked him why no one at Hayward High knew it. He said his music was very personal and very hard to talk about.
I checked with the State Bar and it would appear that Gary passed the bar in 1978 but is now deceased.
If there is a music to the celestial spheres of Heaven Gary, I trust, is in paradise.
Michael Lees
Gary was very soft spoken person who always willing to reach out to anyone when they needed a ear. I think of him often