Albert Haas Jr.

Albert Haas, Jr.

A second-generation native San Franciscan, Al, born on September 11, 1922, died on January 30, 2014, at the age of 91.  He had lived a full and varied life, had uncommonly good fortune and was deeply grateful for it.  His wife Sue, who he dearly loved and who provided him with unwavering support during their 46 years together, survives him.

Al was the fortunate father of Susan Ann Haas, Albert Haas III, M.D., Adam David Haas and Stephen John Haas and grandfather of Monica Lussier, the late David Greenman, Aaron, Hanna, Molly, Jacob, Leah, Lauren and Spencer Haas and great grandfather of Aliyah and Isaac Lussier.

He graduated from Stanford University in 1943, attended Midshipman School at Columbia in New York and served as a deck officer in the Navy during WWII.  On release from the Navy he was active for a number of years in the City's soap manufacturing company founded by his father. From a modest beginning, it had grown to become a supplier to a number of major supermarket chains and a sizeable exporter to Puerto Rico and the Far East.

When the company was sold, the soapmaker became a stockbroker.  Al joined Sutro & Co., the West's pioneer investment firm, where he remained for twenty years.  Established in 1858 during the Gold Rush, miners had brought gold to Sutro's headquarters office on Montgomery St. to be weighed and traded for cash.  California's "Big Four", Crocker, Stanford, Hopkins and Huntington were frequent visitors.

Two years after arriving at Sutro, Al was a partner in the firm, and when it incorporated, he became a member of its five-person Executive Committee.  During his years in finance, he and his close friend, the late Don Jackson, M.D., a world-renowned psychiatrist, wrote "Bulls, Bears and Dr. Freud," one of the first books to explore investor behavior.  Warmly received, it convinced him that writing would be more personally rewarding than helping mostly affluent clients invest their money in the quest for more.

On retirement from Sutro he wrote a series of articles for the Sunday New York Times and many free-lance pieces for The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Francisco Examiner, The Los Angeles Times, and for a number of magazines, including a long-running monthly column in San Francisco Magazine.  A life-long proud liberal Democrat and a lover of the outdoors, Al became a highly regarded direct mail writer for major environmental groups including the Sierra Club, Nature Conservancy, the African Wildlife Foundation, Greenpeace, the Wildlife Conservation Society and for countless progressive causes about which he cared deeply.  For many years he wrote to solicit support for KQED and other public broadcasting stations throughout the country.

Our writer was an ardent fly-fisherman.  His "One More Cast", published in 2001, was a book described by a reviewer as a "lyrical expression of his love of fly-fishing and rivers that flow as gently as a spring creek at dusk."  It described experiences in California and Montana, in Bimini, Cabo San Lucas, Zihuatanejo, Costa Rica, New Zealand and Alaska.  Even in Kenya and Logano.  He was forever awed by the beauty of the places he was privileged to visit.

Over the years Al also wrote nine privately published books and journals, one of them a profile of a treasured friend, the artist Jim Grant, whose work had appeared in galleries in Rome, New York and San Francisco.  His "Tales from a Hillside Hamlet", a tribute to Sausalito, where he lived for more than thirty years, was another.

Still in motion at the age of 82, he traveled to Ohio to speak to senior audiences in five cities about what he considered the compelling need to defeat George W. Bush.  Al and Sue had been among the many San Franciscans who had marched on Market Street to protest the impending U.S attack on Iraq.  When he was 89, he was still fly-fishing, seeking to convince trout and steelhead that they had nothing to fear from him.  He released all of the fish he caught.

A former member of the board of the California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and Co-Chair of California Common Cause, Al was also a trustee of Marin Country Day School and Verde Valley School in Arizona.

Contributions to leading environmental, civil liberties, nuclear disarmament, population control groups, or alternatives meaningful to others, would be appreciated. A memorial celebration will be held in Sausalito, date and location to be announced.