Julian Silva

1927 - 2017

Julian Silva

June 1, 1927March 8, 2017

Julian Silva
Born June 1, 1927
Died March 8, 2017

Pre-deceased by Thomas Sheldon, his companion of fifty-plus years. Survived by two brothers, Claude Silva of Turlock, and Oliver Silva of Castro Valley, and a sister Marianne Trevisan of San Lorenzo, an "adopted" son and daughter, Nicholas Pritchard of Stroud, England, and Charmaine Parsons of London, England, his cat Choura, the love of his old age, as well as eleven nephews and nieces and their multiple offspring.
During the Second World War he served as a Medical Corpsman in the US Navy. He was educated at St. Mary's College (1944: one year before his stint in the Navy), SF City College (1947), where he completed his lower division work in a single semester, USF, from which he graduated in 1949, and UC Berkeley, where he did a year of graduate studies in English Literature. He began his teaching career at Mission High School in 1954, spent the major part of that career (21 years) at Galileo High, where he was head of the English Department for the last seven years. He was on the inaugural staff of Wallenberg High School at the invitation of the principal and spent his final teaching years at Lowell, from which he retired in 1987.
Throughout his life he conducted a major love affair with Italy, principally Tuscany and Venice, beginning in 1949 and ending in 2010. In 1981 Ohio University Press published his novel The Gunnysack Castle, which was later republished (2007) along with a second novel, The Death of Mae Ramos, under the joint title Distant Music, by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, which also published a third book, Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings (2011). He also published four works of varying length on the internet with Smashwords.
His major enthusiasms were literature, traveling, art history (which led to a modest collection), the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet.
At his own request, he is to be cremated privately without any public service or memorial.