Carl Allen Fairfield OBITUARY

Carl Allen Fairfield OBITUARY

Carl Allen Fairfield March 19th, 1938 September 24th, 2024 Carl Allen Fairfield, 86, passed away peacefully at home encircled by family and friends. He will be remembered as a loving husband, dad, stepdad, grandfather and spiritual seeker with a kind heart, a concern for community care, and a sweet sense of humor. Carl joked that he was an avid indoorsman; he loved redwood trees and foggy mornings, as long as he could gaze at them through the window from his comfy chair with a cup of coffee. Carl was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Leona Craig Fairfield and John Buchanan Fairfield. After graduating Tulsa Central High, he attended Princeton University, majoring in psychology and minoring in art. During a year off, he moved to New York City and worked as a page at NBC. After college, upon hearing he was about to be drafted, Carl joined the Navy. Lieutenant (junior grade) Carl served as a radar officer on the USS Cogswell DD651 and did a tour of duty in the Pacific, blessedly serving in between wars. One of his most vivid memories was a visit to the Great Buddha of Kamakura in Japan. Entering the three-stories-tall bronze sculpture of Amitabha, he had a transformative experience that drew him towards Buddhism. A more difficult navy memory was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when his squadron escorted a group of Marines to the Panama Canal as the Cold War heated up. He later served at the US Torpedo Base in Keyport Washington as BOQ officer. Afterwards, Carl relocated to Northern California, where he worked in Mendocino at the State Mental Hospital and as a preschool teacher in Berkeley. He moved briefly to Pasadena, where he studied early childhood education at Pacific Oaks College and married his first wife, Susan Krause n�e Williams. Carl welcomed becoming the stepfather to her children Alan, Susie and Michael. With them, he moved to Humboldt County in 1970, landing in Westhaven. Carl used the GI bill to enroll in a master’s program in Family, Child, and Marriage Counseling from the University of San Francisco. When his first marriage concluded, he courted and married the love of his life, Ruth Puckett Ziemer, who was in the same graduate program. They were married in the backyard of their Fickle Hill home in 1978. Carl was a proud stepparent to Ruth’s two daughters, Tanya and Aimee Ziemer, with whom he was closely connected for the rest of his life. After finishing his degree, Carl worked as Activities Director at the Humboldt Senior Resource Center for 20 years. In this role, he coordinated events, speakers, and travel for elders in the community. Carl was known for his ability to connect with people from across political and social spectrums. With the birth of his daughter Joy Brooke Fairfield in 1981, he became interested in video recording technology. In addition to taping his family, he recorded local events and submitted them to Arcata Community Access Television, figuring it was an easy way to help house-bound seniors get free access to education and entertainment. He was a major contributor to public access TV during the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. Some of Carl’s last years were spent using YouTube to explore his lifelong interests in spirituality, astronomy, and politics, and his family likes to say that he was into video sharing platforms before they were cool. Carl took his special interests quite seriously, including the family’s genealogy, coin collecting, Course in Miracles, local Native history, and Tibetan Buddhism. Being on a spiritual path with his beloved wife of 46 years was a core part of Carl’s identity, something that brought meaning to his life and grace to his death. In an obituary draft he wrote for himself, Carl said: “The eternal entity which incarnated as Carl Allen Fairfield willingly dropped his body and entered into his next growth stage after blessing all his acquaintances, friends, and relatives. If he neglected to make amends to any fellow life sojourners, he hopes to do so now in absentia.” Carl is survived by his wife Ruth Puckett Fairfield, his children Joy Brooke Fairfield (Valentina Perez), Aimee Ziemer Markham (Jay Markham), and Tanya Ziemer Trump, whose dear husband Gordon Trump passed away last October. He is also survived by his grandchildren Miles Markham, Elias Markham, Ian Trump, and Connor Trump (Michelle Dickey), as well as his stepchildren Alan E. Krause (Alice Krause and children), Susan Jenkins (Chad Jenkins and children) and Michael Krause (and family), and his sister-in-law Katherine Puckett Layton. A memorial ceremony will be held on November 10th 2024 at 3:00pm at the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bayside. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Food for People: www.foodforpeople.org. Until the last days of his life, he asked if his ballot had arrived in the mail. In his honor, please vote in this pivotal election, and support the women, children, and elderly people in your life.