Kenneth Scudder

Kenneth Edward Scudder

Ken Scudder died unexpectedly of traumatic brain injury on December 20th. Born in Honolulu, HI to Elmer Edward and Alwilda Cline Scudder on July 20, 1941, Ken was evacuated with his mother and sister to Glendale, CA several months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. His father, a West Point graduate, was sent to the South Pacific.
Ken's curiosity and love of knowledge were illustrated at age six when he co-founded the Glendale Museum of Arts and Sciences, an eclectic institution estimated to have had 10,000 visitors. The family moved to Fort Wayne, IN, then Tulsa, OK where Ken won 2nd prize in a regional spelling bee. Graduating from Wisconsin's Whitefish Bay High School, he earned a degree in politics from Princeton University.
As a public school kid, Ken found Princeton's elite environment intimidating, but credited the university with the beginnings of his critical thinking, describing his time there as an "intellectual adventure." He also hung out in nearby Greenwich Village, listening to John Coltrane and other jazz greats on the sidewalk outside the famous Half Note. Active in track and cross country in high school and college, he continued running, then jogging, throughout his life, including several marathons.
Right after college, Ken and two high school friends took an "On the Road" trip to Jack Kerouac's "Frisco." It was the city where he would spend most of his life.
A growing political awareness marked his college years. Later describing the era's confluence of events – Vietnam, civil rights and third world revolutionary movements – as a "great moral crisis," he worked for the Congress of Racial Equality, then joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1964's Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration drive. Ken met his first wife Patricia Amlin in Mississippi, working there on and off for two years, during which his son Reed was born.
After Mississippi, Ken worked on a master's degree at SF State, but turbulent political times, including the 1968 Student Strike, continued to absorb his attention. His marriage over, he lived on a commune in Mendocino, then traveled to Oregon to work as a fisherman.
Returning to San Francisco, Ken earned a J.D. from Golden Gate University and worked for the University of California's Continuing Education of the Bar for 26 years. He was a volunteer attorney for the SF Bar Association's Homeless Advocacy Project and on asylum cases for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights.
With a voraciously studious approach to anything that interested him, Ken had a deep, complex knowledge of politics and international affairs, as well as fine art and literature. He loved the city's galleries, museums, film festivals and world affairs venues. He loved reading about and tasting wine and beer and had a knack for finding good, inexpensive wines. His ADHD made it difficult to follow recipes, but easy to create magic out of disparate ingredients. A perfect Saturday was a jog to and from the Ferry Building Farmers' Market, followed by an afternoon of cooking.
Ken volunteered for the Telegraph Hill Dwellers' Pioneer Park and tree planting projects, UC Cal Star for disabled students, and Food Runners, delivering food to shelters and low-income housing for 25 years. He also volunteered for local supervisorial campaigns and the 2018 Prevent Cruelty measure.
Visiting Greece in 1984 with his second wife Kellin Defiel, Ken became a lifelong Hellenophile. They loved the beauty, history, food, culture and spirit of Greece and explored it extensively.
Ken's passion for peace and justice never waned. He described himself as a writer of "cranky, seldom published" letters to the editor. Yet he also had a great love and zest for life, a wonderful sense of humor, and an instinctive kindness toward all beings. He loved his family deeply and took great pride in son Reed and young grandson Atticus. Ken's survivors also include his wife, Kellin, first wife Patricia, sister Carolyn Haring, niece and nephews, Karen, David and Chris Edwards and extended family Christina, Elissa and Petra Buchanan.
Ken's sense of what made life worth living was captured well by the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis: "...how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else."
A celebration of Ken's life is planned for March 30th at 1 p.m. at his San Francisco home. Donations in his memory may be made to UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, https://www.unrwausa.org; Food Runners, http://www.foodrunners.org, or Muttville Senior Dog Rescue, https://muttville.org.