stepping off the edge

Please excuse this departure from the fun travel stories. This is the obituary below for my dear friend Don Tabor…

Birth: 1947-Death: 2025

A good guy has left us.

Don Taber, longtime Santa Cruz resident, father, husband, businessman, and sailor was born in Hayward in 1947. His parents moved the family to the San Lorenzo Valley and as a teenager he learned valuable electrical and carpentry skills working for father Cliff Taber, who was a locally well-regarded contractor.

After leaving active service with the US Navy Reserve in 1968, Don and high school buddy John Hooper delivered a Cal 20 sailboat from Santa Cruz to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. From there, Don hitchhiked to South America “upending the peace” with his long haired hippie ways in conservative Brazil. Upon returning to the US in 1971, he joined friends Paul Komen and Terry King to form The Flying Barn Bros carpentry shop at the Sash Mill. By 1976, he had completed his first self-built 31′ trimaran, Redwood Coast, and sailed to Hawaii with mates Bill Muhly and Ken Bloom.

In 1978, Don formed a business partnership with friends Michael Termini and Randy Lakos, TRIAD Electric of Santa Cruz. While raising a family and working full time as an electrical contractor, Don managed to self build a second blue-water 44′ trimaran in TRIAD’s backyard. Launching RC2 in 1985, Don with wife Siouxee and their two children Jesse and Meriah, headed first to Mexico and then to Hawaii in 1989. Following the return to Santa Cruz, Don continued his work as Director of Operations at TRIAD and keeping RC2 in ship shape.

After partnering with his second wife Anna, RC2 set sail again in 2004 for what was to be an extended cruise. First through the South Pacific, it turned into a nearly five-year adventure-filled trip around the globe. Along the way, the crew of RC2 found jobs managing a beach resort in Fiji and installing their solar power system. Later, after sailing from Southeast Asia through the Red Sea and into the Mediterranean, the two helped set up a West Marine franchise in Istanbul. One of the many experiences aside from safely navigating RC2, Don was recruited after arriving in Cartagena, Colombia for the role of an archeologist in an Australian insurance commercial.

Following a last cruising season in Mexico, Don and Anna swallowed the hook and moved to Ben Lomond in 2017, transferring RC2 stewardship to longtime friend Randy Lakos. Soon after, Don was diagnosed with thymic cancer, a journey that has now come to an end after a seven-year battle.

Don is survived by wife Anna, son Jesse, sister Diane, ex wife Siouxee and grandkids Chloe and Zephyr. He is preceded in death by daughter Meriah, and parents Grace and Cliff Taber.

We’d like to acknowledge the excellent and kind care of the Palo Alto Veterans Administration oncology team.

lf this post seems a bit fractured it is, because I choose to write it extemporaneously, totally off the cuff. What the hell am I saying, they are all done unencumbered by the thought process!

There is absolutely no reason, back in the 70’s, that this man would have taken a chance hiring a young Jersey boy, fast talking huckster. Not your average California dude. I can only imagine it was because he and his partner Randy needed help with a project they had acquired: the then Louden Nelson Center, now London Nelson after history corrected the misnaming of it many years ago. It was the conversion of a public school building into a community center.

Don and I were as much opposites as we were similar. The similarity was our work ethic. Almost everything took second place behind our work. Well, perhaps for me my children came very close and for Don it was sailing. I think he took some evil joy in bringing this city guy out on his boat and watching him alternately turn green or have the look of abject fear on his face. Hope I brought him joy! I was having a great time making all of $12 an hour and being part of a three man team of a company haphazardly called Randy Electric. Named for our founder and holder of the license, Randy himself. A quick word about Randy, still working and still the best electrical man I have ever known.

Don and I worked together for many years, some as his employee, some as his partner I eventually became (not by some phenomenal journeyman powers but rather due to the charity he must have felt) a partner in the company.

He had a devilishly dry wit. He would drop some snarky comment as he walked away, and if you were observant you could see the little smile on his face. Loved that. He was meticulous in his bidding, calculating every nut, bolt, box, and screw. So meticulous in fact, that we often came up short on the job because he “didn’t figure to do it that way.” As taciturn as he might have been I never saw him not come to the aid of anyone needing help. I came to work one day and found a handmade pair of excellent saw horses. I was building my first house at the time and he just thought I could use them, and I did.

He was a master craftsman of fine woodworking. This is a talent not shared by any electrician I ever knew. Actually, we are notoriously bad with wood but Don was beyond amazing, as evidenced by his building 31+’ trimarans. Two of them in fact. I watched during the second build. And the transport of these crafts from our shop to the harbor always occurred in the middle of the night, orchestrated by Don himself. They were memorable and as dangerous as you can imagine.

All and all I owe my somewhat comfortable life to Don. From hiring me to making me a partner to allowing me to purchase the entire company he, as well as Randy, directly engineered, unknowingly, my success. He suffered through my screw ups as his employee, he suffered through many of my hair brained ideas as his partner, and he endured my rants as his employer.

He’s one of those guy you somehow always thought would be around. And suddenly, he is not.

I do hope this post did not come across as too self serving. I have always hated those elegies that turn out to be more about the speaker than the departed. Just know that this loss hit hard. More so because we were in Canada when his memorial took place last Saturday. Fitting that it took place at our long time home for the business. His presence will be there forever in my heart and mind.