Hey everyone –
Many of you had the pleasure of meeting and working/ playing with the wonderful Carl Smith at the 2015 and 2022 reunion gatherings. I wanted to let you know that Carl’s home in Altadena was lost in the Eaton fire yesterday. He and his wife Letty had evacuated Tuesday night just in case, and then the winds just kept pushing the fire down the hills. A neighbor who went back yesterday to check on their street let them know that every house was gone.
Carl and Letty are staying for now with one of their daughters in the LA area. They had insurance, so it’s possible they could rebuild, but the massive shock of it all is only a day old and he’s not sure what’s next. When they left they had time to take a few things with them, but not much. Two of his three guitars made it out. “It’s still all very surreal,” he told me when we talked on the phone last night. He sent this photo earlier yesterday, taken by their neighbor, with the note: “Really happened!”
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So much has been lost, to so many, in the LA area in the past few days, and Carl isn’t the type to spend much time feeling sorry for himself. “I’ve been caught up in a national news event,” as he put it. But he admits he’ll miss the view of the San Gabriel Mountains from the picture window in his home office, and the little garden of native plants out back that he and Letty tended to for many years, and just that special feeling of having found a place that suited them and their two daughters just right. He treasured the hiking trails that were just a few minutes from their front door – that feeling of being close to nature.
If you’ve spent time with Carl you’re fully aware of how generous and self-effacing he is, how he always wants the focus to be on you, not him – but I also know that this email list can be a way of sharing hugs across the ether, so I wanted to alert y’all to this tough news in case you wanted to reach out. I’d suggest that perhaps instead of writing him via the email thread, you can send Carl a personal note (or a recording of yourself singing/ playing music, he loves that!) to his email:
carl_smith(a)mac.com<mailto:carl_smith@mac.com>
All the best to everyone,
cs