Public Eye

Ken Wormhoudt was a Pasadena landscape architect for many years -- the family lived in the Duncan-Irwin House near the Arroyo, back before anyone much cared about Greene & Greene -- and the house is one of the brothers' greatest. Ken did the pine trees that surround the Neighborhood Church just down the block from his house, on Orange Grove. They moved north decades ago.

I was friends with their oldest son Jonathan at Blair High -- now a psychologist in New York City -- and knew that son Zach had become one of the greatest big-wave surfers in the world, a Mavericks specialist. And I knew that Mardi Wormhoudt had been the mayor of Santa Cruz and then on the county board of supervisors up there. But I had lost touch.

Walking along the cliffs toward Steamer Lane this summer, I came across this bench.

Ken, it turns out, died 13 years ago -- and his firm, now run by Zach, is the premier designer of skateboard parks in the world.

It's a lovely place for a memorial bench. Steamer Lane is just beyond it and below it, one of the great surf spots on the West Coast. A real nice place to stand right above the surfers as they whip by.

Mardi is quite ill herself just now. I so loved her energy and passion when I was a kid in their fantastically bohemian household. They are wonderful people; a great family to have grown up with; blessings be upon them.