Clarence Sterling A.K.A. Riverend Sterling R.I.P.

Clarence Sterling has passed away. Today I am sad. The honorable Riverend Sterling was a major source of my understanding of James Joyce. I used to eagerly await his well written post on any Joycean topic. I knew little of him as a person and while reading his obituary today I found that he was an amazing man that had done his best to change the world one disaster at a time. I urge all my readers to read this obituary.
The Riv. Loved to talk about his therory of Saint Brighid and Joyce. I wonder if Saint Brighid and him have had a talk in the after life yet. If you knew him or he had an efect on your life please leave a note.

By Colleen Cason, ccason@VenturaCountyStar.com
January 16, 2005

Clarence Sterling was ready for whatever brand of misery each threw at
us.

Californians chuckle when we hear our state does not experience
seasons. We
have our fire, our quake, our drought and our flood.

And he would have been prepared to comfort those who were displaced and
stranded when rain-driven creeks escaped their banks in the Ojai Valley
last
week.

As a longtime American Red Cross volunteer, he would have been the
first to
arrive at the Nordhoff High School emergency shelter to comfort anyone
in
doubt or despair.

He would have been ... except Clarence Sterling died Jan. 7 at age 59.
Cancer claimed him just as one of the worst storms in memory gathered
outside his window.

For the first time in more than a decade, his cohorts in compassion had
to
do their work without him.

"Clarence was not there with us in body," said Dale Hanson, who staffed
the
Ojai Red Cross flooding shelter, "but he was very much there in
spirit."

Sterling was so many things to so many people. He was an expert on the
often-impenetrable prose of novelist James Joyce as well as the rarely
traveled wilderness of Ventura County. He was a student of American
Indian
ritual and an environmentalist who helped stop a gypsum mine from
coming to
The Ojai. He wrote poems and music. He was a father, a husband, a
grandfather, a friend.

He was simply one of the most unencumbered spirits in Ojai, a place
populated by nonconformists of all bents.

But toward the end of his days, Sterling said he was proudest of the
work he
had done for that most mainstream of institutions -- the Red Cross.

"My dad was motivated to work for the Red Cross because he feared in
crisis
situations some people would fall through the cracks," said Eben
Sterling,
an ad executive with two San Francisco skateboard magazines.

Clarence Sterling once told me his job as an aid worker was to make
sure no
victim was left sitting on the sidewalk wondering what to do next.

After receiving a diagnosis of esophageal cancer in late 2003, Clarence
knew
what to do: live to the fullest every season he had left.

Last January, he organized a memorial service for the 10 people who
died in
flooding in Ventura County in 1969. Sterling believed the victims of
that
disaster were too little remembered and the lessons too little studied.

Sterling still felt well enough to drive the Red Cross truck in Ojai's
annual July 4 parade. With his three young grandchildren by his son Bo,
he
paraded at 3 mph down Ojai's main drag.

The weekend before Sterling died, he made that same journey in the back
of
an ambulance.

While he was hospitalized for the last time earlier this month, a water
pipe
broke in the home he shared with his wife of 23 years, Kristina Reja.
It
rendered the house uninhabitable.

The man who had held the hands of so many flood victims had himself
been
made homeless by errant water.

One of the largest clubs in Ojai has got to be the FOC: Friends of
Clarence.
Through this network, Kristina found perfect shelter. Sterling was
offered a
room at the spiritual center on Meditation Mount in the eastern Ojai
Valley.

As the ambulance carrying Sterling drove 15 mph down Ojai Avenue, he
took
his last look at the city he loved.

He died at dusk on a Friday, his bed facing the southern slopes of the
Ojai
mountains.

"The wind and rain came up before he left us," said his devoted friend
Clive
Leeman.

A week after he died, the Red Cross disaster operations center in
Ventura
was teeming with almost three dozen volunteers aiding victims of the
deadly
mudslide in La Conchita and the devastating floods in the Ojai Valley.
Television screens hooked up to satellites showed the devastation.

Volunteers fielded phone calls from disaster victims and then posted
information on the white boards that line the room. The atmosphere was
charged with adrenaline, the volunteers powered by caffeine.

"It holds the sweat and tears of hundreds of volunteers. It has a
wonderful
energy," said Jason Smith, executive director of the Ventura County
chapter
of the American Red Cross.

Three weeks before Sterling died, this 30-by-40-foot space was named in
his
honor.

In name and in spirit, Sterling will be with everyone who gives aid and
comfort to victims of any future drought, fire, quake or flood.

Clarence Sterling truly was the man for all of California's seasons.

-- A memorial service for Clarence Sterling has been scheduled for 2
p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 29, at Libbey Bowl in Ojai.

-- Victims of the recent disasters can receive aid by calling the Red
Cross
at 1-866-GET-INFO.