Kit (Christian) Carvel Warne

1944 - 2023

Resident of Corte Madera Kit was born at French Hospital in San Francisco, living with his parents, Joan and Harvey, in Sausalito in Hurricane Gulch soon after WW 2. They all shared the love of nature, learning, creativity, and freedom of his grandparents’ home in Point Reyes. Kit learned to swim at Drake High pool, White House Pool, and early Bolinas. Overcoming challenges to health and reading, Kit graduated UC San Jose an electrical engineer and began a management career with PG&E in San Luis Obispo, later maintaining power facilities throughout California.
Kit embodied the values and interests of his devoted parents: tolerance, equality, lack of pretense, community involvement, indifference to temptation, selflessness, doing the dirty work, doing it first and doing it alone if necessary. These, and the Nature, the treasures that made Marin a rich and nurturing place to live. The Corte Madera Warnes imagined a post-war America that had the resources and initiative to right and repair the mistakes of our country’s past, and to ensure true prosperity and education for all.
Kit never asked anything of anybody except what he could do to help.
As a boy and teen Kit’s life of service - not the self-service and defiance of his brothers John and Mat’s 60s but the self-sacrifice his Dad taught - started with Cub Scouting and high school. Kit followed Harvey, accepting leadership roles in pack, troop, and post, honing outdoorsman skills and sharing the wealth. High-spirited but not personally competitive, Kit, under Bob Troppmann at Redwood, assumed equipment management of school sports programs and gave all he could to them and their athletes - as well as to the school’s Audio-Visual equipment operations that he mastered.
With Jack and the other Sutherlands and countless friends, Kit’s volunteer spirit formed the core of the renowned Prince Charles Pipe Band. Kit maintained, organized, and mentored generations of members on their journey to international success, top performance standards, and world championship in Scotland. Within California, Kit’s enormous red bus carried them everywhere safely - as well as carrying the Boy Scouts.
Avid camper Kit knew well the State, from Wright’s Lake to Kekawaka to the Pinnacles to Tamarancho.
With retirement in 2000 Kit moved on. He showed up at his grammar school, Neil Cummins, and inserted himself as technician and consultant as the new-age electronics were installed. With Bruce Amos he knew every wire and switch. Then Marilyn Nemzer called and Kit found a new outlet for his community giving. The Book Exchange, with Kit’s heft, began to adjust the inequalities in availability of reading materials for students around the world. Kit touched every part of the operation as it grew to filling shipping containers with usable books shared world-wide. Then, gradually, a few forgetful years, the dementia that bullied Kit brought an end. His big old heart had had enough. And like that he was gone and everywhere at once forever. You might ask if Kit gave to others at the cost of giving to himself, you could ask that too of your shamans, saints and swamis.