Conn ‘Ringo’ Hallinan passed away on June 19th after a tough battle with cancer. The tributes began appearing the next day. Kate Hallinan, daughter of Danny and Wendy Hallinan, wrote movingly about what it was like to have Ringo for an uncle. On the Portside website, David Bacon gave a rich description of Ringo’s abilities as a journalist, teacher and political activist. Charles Idelson wrote a history packed obituary entitled The Life and Times of Conn Hallinan bulging with great quotes from friends and colleagues. Sam Whiting wrote a fine lengthy obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle and Ringo’s colleague from UCSC, Paul Skenazy, wrote of the value he gave to his students. Ringo was a very loved person. He was witty, generous, politically savvy, a wonderful writer and raconteur, and his grasp of history and modern day politics was simply awe inspiring. Oh yes. I forgot to mention his command of military history and weaponry. He was one very impressive human being.
I first met Ringo and all the Hallinan family when I was five years old after the Myers family arrived from the east coast to settle in Mill Valley in September of 1952. My father Blackie, a sailor by trade, had been a founding vice president of the once radical National Maritime Union but was now blacklisted and unable to hold a job on the east coast due to the negative attentions of the federal government. On our arrival in Marin he, my mother Beth, sisters Nell, Kate and brother Jim were immediately embraced socially by people of the political left. We met the Dreyfus family, the Coxes, the Robertsons, Harry Bridges, the Goldblatts and of course the Hallinans.
It was a dangerous time to be left wing as the anti-red hysteria in the US was so severe that it made people with left-of-centre beliefs stick together. Liberals were tarred with the same brush as Communists by the government and the media. The House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy whipped up a climate of terror in the land with their televised hearings demanding citizens to name names.
Ringo was the fifth son of Vin and Vivian Hallinan. Each of the six boys was given a nickname: Patrick was Butch, Terence, Kayo, Michael, Tuffy, Matthew, Dynamite and Conn was originally called Flash but he didn’t get on with it. “I felt more like the Pillsbury Doughboy than Flash,” he said. So when he saw John Ford’s western Stagecoach he settled on Ringo after John Wayne’s character, the Ringo Kid. Danny, the youngest son was christened Dangerous but that never took either.
The Hallinan family lived a life that most people dream about. Vin and Vivian were both very rich and lived on a huge estate in Ross, the wealthiest town in Marin County. Vin was a famous criminal lawyer and Vivian was an owner/manager of many big apartment buildings, mostly in San Francisco.
Because of the Hallinans’ left leaning ideas, the snooty residents of Ross wouldn’t allow their kids to play with their youngest son Danny who was the same age as my brother Jim. Therefore we were invited many times to spend the weekend up at their mansion. A big porch with pillars overlooked a massive lawn, artificial lake, large swimming pool and gymnasium. They had a maid who cooked and a meal at their house was like eating in a fancy restaurant.
Ringo would take Danny regularly to the movies including horror films. I heard a blow-by-blow account of Beast From 20,000 Fathoms from Danny on their porch after Ringo had taken him to see it. In fact I heard detailed descriptions from Ringo and Danny of films I never did see until I was a grown up: Them!, The Thing and It Came From Beneath The Sea. Danny described to me, years later, how strange it had been travelling home across the very same Golden Gate Bridge they had just seen pulled down by Ray Harryhausen’s giant octopus. Danny, Ringo and I shared a passion for horror movies though this was not true of all the Hallinan boys. “Tuffy liked horror films,” said Ringo. “But by the time I was taking Danny and you guys to them, he was gone to college. Dynamite never liked them and the older brothers were too cool.”
The Rafael theatre in San Rafael was where most of the 1950s sci-fi horror movies played.
Horrors of a more serious nature were affecting the Hallinan family at this time. When we first met them, Vin had just finished a 6 month federal prison sentence for contempt of court. He was also running for president of the United States on the Progressive Party ticket. What had brought down the full force of the federal government’s power on Vincent Hallinan was his decision, in 1949, to defend Harry Bridges, president of the ILWU, the longshore union. The government had been trying to convict and deport Harry, a native of Australia, as a suspected member of the Communist Party, for years. Vin came out of jail just in time to campaign for the presidency. It was no surprise that he was not elected as president in 1952 but his campaign gave a rallying point to the American left at a time when it was under severe attack across the land. The media put its spotlight on the campaigns of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson but paid little attention to his. However Vin and Vivian received much scrutiny from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Both of them had been under surveillance by the federal government ever since the Bridges trial and investigators now turned what they found over to the Internal Revenue Service. In 1953 the government indicted both Vin and Vivian for income tax evasion. In a trial which examined all the luxurious extravagance of the Hallinan lifestyle, the jury ultimately decided to acquit Vivian but convicted Vin so he returned to prison for the next eighteen months.
From left: Vincent Hallinan and Harry Bridges in court; Vin’s presidential campaign; Vin, Vivian and Danny at the Ross polling station November, 1952; Vivian on the cover of March of Labor.
So it was a turbulent time up at the Ross mansion. I only knew a little of what was happening as my parents would discuss it at the dinner table. There was no shame in the Myers family about going to jail. Blackie had done a fair bit of time inside as a union organiser and Beth said of Vin’s situation: “If they can’t get you on anything else, they can always get you on income tax.”
On most of our weekend visits with Danny it was always Ringo who paid special attention to us. During one such visit, we three boys spent a summer’s night out on the lawn in sleeping bags. The stars glittered in the sky above as we lay on the grass near the empty artificial lake. We weren’t asleep and almost certainly chattering about something or other when the near silence in the woods behind the lake was suddenly shattered by the sound of tramping footsteps accompanied by a blood curdling growl. Danny immediately sat bolt upright with a wide eyed look of terror on his face. The footsteps and growling came closer. We all fell into a panic. We stood up in our sleeping bags ready to run when the monster leapt onto the edge of the artificial lake. Of course it was Ringo. His performance succeeded in scaring the wits out of all three of us. He then sat out with us on the lawn for some time telling us stories which was his way. He was a wonderful story teller.
On another occasion Vivian drove Ringo, Danny, Jimmy and I to San Rafael where she dropped us off at the Rafael Theatre. The movie we saw was This Island Earth, a terrific full colour sci-fi film about the inhabitants of a distant planet, Metaluna, and their attempt to colonise earth. The Metalunans all had enormously huge foreheads and white hair. I was particularly thrilled to see the Metalunan Mutant whose image I had drawn pictures of from the newspaper ads. The second feature was an exciting bank robbery film, Violent Saturday. When the films were over the four of us walked back in the dark along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to San Anselmo then onto Ross. On what was a pretty long walk for young kids, Ringo kept us engaged in conversation the whole time.
From left: The Hallinan boys with Vin in the early 1950s; Hallinan family portrait 1960-back row: Ringo, Tuffy, Dynamite,Butch, Kayo. front row: Vin, Vivian, Danny. On the right a photo of Ringo late 1960s.
Of course the Hallinan boys were all tough and played rough, unlike the Myers kids and, sensing this difference, Ringo always played to it. I remember one summer’s day sitting on the huge porch in Ross while Ringo held an American football in his hand with the the sharp end aimed at the side of my head. “If you move a muscle,” he told me in his calm, commanding voice, “I will propel this football directly at your temple which will, I promise you, knock you spark out.” How long this went on for I don’t remember but although I was in a state of acute tension throughout that time, I was also amused by his performance which was, as usual, pitch perfect. Just as the growling wild animal noises had been in the forest behind the artificial lake, he achieved a realism worthy of a quality film.
Vin, in addition to being a well educated lawyer was also, in Ringo’s words, a jock. He was a committed athlete who didn’t smoke or drink alcohol. He taught all the boys to swim, play football and to fight, The Hallinan boys soon developed a fearsome reputation in Marin County. They also were academic achievers and steeped in history. I remember being at Ross when the boys were painting the downstairs hall and Ringo was up a ladder telling Jimmy and I all about the British admiral Horatio Nelson who disobeyed an order to withdraw during a naval engagement. “And he lifted the glass to his one blind eye,” intoned Ringo dramatically from the top of the ladder as he mimed the telescope with his right hand. “And he said, ‘I see no ship.’”
When the family finally sold the Ross mansion and moved to Tiburon I still stayed over and one night I shared a bedroom with Ringo. Before we went to sleep, he laid out a list of conditions for sleeping in the same room as him. “Do not rustle the sheets,” he said quietly but forcefully, “As it may keep me awake.” He went on for some time listing the various things I must not do which seemed to build in importance and intensity until he finally reached his crescendo: “And if you should snore, you’ll wake up in the middle of the lagoon with an anvil wrapped around your neck!” He had a knack for improvising his stories in a perfectly structured way, starting small and building to a glorious climax. This instinct made Ringo a wonderful writer, performer and later, teacher.
I didn’t see Ringo much in my teenage years except when I’d spend weekends at my sister Nell’s apartment in San Francisco. She saw a lot of the Hallinan boys through leftwing political activities such as sit-ins at car showrooms on Van Ness to protest racist hiring practices. So I wasn’t around for all the activities celebrated in these tributes to him. My first face to face reunion with Ringo occurred in 1995 at Babbie Dreyfus’s service of remembrance at the Outdoor Art Club in Mill Valley. Danny, Dynamite and Kayo were also there as was my brother Jim and sister Kate. Jared Dreyfus was the master of ceremonies and his wife Genie, kids Adam, Christian and Kate were all present.
On my next visit to California I had lunch with Ringo in Berkeley. He was talking about how, as kids, he and his brothers used to explode into fights all the time often for no reason at all. I asked him when was the last time he had a physical fight and he said it was with Sonny Barger of the Hell’s Angels on a 1965 demo. Several years passed before my curiosity about this resurfaced. I was having an email exchange with Danny who mentioned that this fight was something which Ringo was particularly proud of. So I got in touch with him and he told me about it. The demonstration occurred at the time that he was chair of the DuBois Club and he was approached by the Vietnam Day committee with a request for some muscle as they’d learned of the Hell’s Angels’ intention to disrupt their march. From his contacts on the left he put together about forty guys who could fight and were willing to form a front line for the march.
“The cops had stopped us at the Oakland-Berkeley border,” said Ringo. “And we saw the Angels clustered at one side of the street, about twenty five of them. The Oakland police were working in cahoots with the Angels and opened their lines to let them through. We had a big banner we were holding. Kayo and I were in the centre. Sonny Barger, chair of the Angels, came through first, shouting abuse at the demonstrators. He started tearing our banner down. It was the perfect setup for us. As he pulled the banner down, Kayo hit him with a right hand on one side of his jaw and I delivered a left hook on his other. He went down like a stone. The Angels kept coming, thinking we were a bunch of pacifist wimps. They suddenly found themselves surrounded by a lot of tough guys bent on pounding them. I remember the looks on their faces as they suddenly realised they were in trouble. And they were. We kicked their asses until the Oakland police attacked us and drove us back. Barger has lied about that day on many occasions. How they kicked the commies’ asses. It was a fine moment.”
On the left a photo of Danny and Ringo in the former Soviet Union, 1961; On the right, Ringo caught by the camera at anti-Vietnam war march that the Hell’s Angels tried to disrupt in 1965.
Of course Ringo and Kayo were both tough guys. “Our parents thought we should know the way the world really worked,” said Ringo. “And that there was right and wrong, and that we should support the former and resist the latter. Yes, we had money, but that didn’t help you in a fist fight with some right winger. We didn’t win all those fights, but after a bit kids got the idea that picking a fight with us wasn’t worth it and they stopped using the “N” word around us.”
But in addition to being tough, all the Hallinan boys were extremely well educated. Ringo’s intellect was so impressive as he was constantly absorbing and accessing new information in brilliant detail which he shared with everyone he encountered.
His friend Michael Myerson remembers: “Of the many times I’ve been with Ringo over the years, I can think of few during which I didn’t learn something new. Want to know the best way to throw a punch? What Yosemite teaches us about archeology? Ringo’s your go-to source. He’ll explain how Marshall Georgy Zhukov and the Red Army wiped out Hitler’s best divisions which in turn allowed the British and US D-Day invasion to be successful.”
Kate Hallinan, a practicing attorney, remembers that her uncle “was my Google in the days before the internet—his vast filing cabinets full of meticulously catalogued newspaper clippings provided sources for my first research papers, and he always had a suggestion for a great book on any topic one can imagine. He could discuss any political happening or historical period and his news columns were astounding in their detail and nuance, and always peppered with his signature humour and his signature compassion for the world and for the ever present injustice within it.”
On the left Danny barbecues while chatting with Ringo; From left: Ringo Hallinan, Anne Hallinan, Kate Hallinan, Wendy Hallinan and Kate’s daughter Clementine.
His columns were indeed splendid. He would describe scary military encounters in such locations as the China Sea with such precision and he knew how much all this weaponry cost: the high performance US F-35 fighter jet had a price tag of $1.7 trillion and cost $36,000 an hour to fly. It also had $640 toilet seats and a $7,622 coffee maker. Of course Ringo was deeply opposed to warmongers and the weapons industry but this didn’t stop the journalist in him reporting what he saw. He would use the F-35 and its mind boggling cost in lectures as an example of how the American government had the wrong priorities when so many citizens were in poverty and student debt was so high.
From left: Ringo being interviewed on television; A leaflet advertising one of Ringo’s lectures; Ringo with his wife Anne.
Both Sam Whiting in the Chronicle and Paul Skenazy of UCSC mention Martha Mendoza one of Ringo’s star pupils who went on to win two Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. She was still going to Ringo for story advice in the weeks before he died.
If the tributes from his previous students are anything to go by, Ringo has inspired several generations of young journalists to go out in the world and tell the truth. Paul Skenazy says: “If there is one comment of Ringo’s that sums up his approach as a teacher and journalist it might be this: ‘The objective persona is like the tooth fairy—it doesn’t exist. . . . The point isn’t to be objective and neutral, but to be fair and accurate.’ Fair and accurate wasn’t just a catchphrase with him, it was a way of life. It required thoughtfulness. It demanded research. It required a sense of history, of class and race awareness.”
Those of us who knew and loved Ringo Hallinan are poorer now he’s gone, but the world is a richer place for the work he did on this earth.
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