George Flint

1930 - 2025

George Flint

April 7, 1930 - January 16, 2025

Orangevale, California - George Flint died on January 16 in Orangevale, California at the age of 94.

He was born in Englewood, New Jersey, on April 7, 1930 and grew up in the small town of Harrington Park, spending summers on a "hobby farm" in New York State. He graduated from Storm King prep school and Bucknell University. He was a captain in the Marine Corps.

He came West. He was a stock broker but made few sales. One potential customer was Anidelle Hershenow, a recently widowed mother of four young children. He sold her no stocks but fell in love and successfully courted both her and the children. They were married in 1961 and went on to have two more daughters.

He got out of selling/not selling stocks, which he disliked, and became a teacher, which he loved. He taught for 20 years at Bullard, Baird, and Lawless Elementary schools. He was a wonderful teacher whose classroom was charged with humor, warmth, energy, and enthusiasm.

He and Anidelle created a nurturing and vibrant home which was always open to friends and strangers. They hosted foreign exchange students from Belgium and Austria and maintained lifelong close relationships with them. Both George and Anidelle were schoolteachers, summers were free, they took advantage of it and ventured with their family, 6 kids! out into the world. They spent an entire summer driving and camping their way across the country and back in a VW bus towing a tent trailer. They lived one summer in a tent camp in Yosemite Valley. They took their bus and tent camper up the coast into the British Columbia interior. They camped, fished, skied, and backpacked in the Sierras. They built a cabin near Huntington Lake which became a gathering place for many.

George looked closely and lovingly at the world through the lens of his camera. He made beautiful photographs of places and people. He and Anidelle continued to travel widely in their retirement years, on their own or visiting their children in Africa, Europe, Russia, Central America, and Australia.

He was an active volunteer in youth groups, Scouts, environmental and other community organizations, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno. Yet it was on a direct, personal level that he served and connected most deeply. He asked people for their stories, listened closely, and remembered what they told him. A learner as much as a teacher, he continued to evolve and adapt, while remaining true to his fundamental convictions. He had integrity. He was caring, empathetic, non-judgmental. He aged with notable dignity and grace, projecting warmth, optimism, humor, love and gratitude for family up to the last days of his life. Many of us grew even closer to him in his last years.

Always a loyal and supportive companion to his wife, Anidelle, he nursed her gently and patiently through a long illness, until she died in 2019.

George is survived by five children, Ruthann, Jennifer, Sally, Nick, and Robert, and ten grandchildren. One son, Tom, died earlier.

A celebration of his and Anidelle's lives will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Fresno on June 14 of this year.