Editor:
Years ago, I learned that the word “polymath” referred to an individual with diverse interests and pastimes. Sadly, I also learned that one of my closest, and best friends, Steve Aldridge, had recently left us.
Some called Steve the “Mayor of Ocean Beach.” In my mind’s eye, I thought of him as the “Polymath of OB.”
Steve was four years ahead of me at Point Loma High, yet in those days, age didn’t matter in the surf culture of Ocean Beach. Our mentors, many of them veterans of WWII and Korea, guided us through the treacherous shoals of adolescence and into the way of the Kanaka kai — or the Polynesian “waterman.” It was an education not only of surfing, diving, and preparing ocean dishes but of ethics and right versus wrong.
Aldridge took this seriously, teaching me, for example, how to cast a hoop net for fish from Sunset Cliffs. Another time, before I could drive, I had saved enough money from my paper route to purchase a surfboard from Dale Velzy in San Clemente. The trouble was, when it was ready, I had no way to take possession.
Steve didn’t hesitate to drive me to get the board, and on the way home, we paddled out at Trestles break on a vintage Southern California day.
Steve was also a gifted athlete, holding records at PLHS in track and football. Later, he and his wife, Susi, opened their own business, a gift shop named “Just for the Halibut.“
Most of San Diego, however, knew him as an entertainer, a musician who appeared at the Red Garter and other venues playing the keyboards as he sang with a multifarious voice around town.
Later in life, Steve and Susi created a home on Seeley Lake in Montana, while we did the same in Ketchum, Idaho. Even these distances didn’t dampen the four of us from visiting each other, allowing Steve and me to share our favorite fly fishing spots.
Over time, our personal views of politics and government began to differ substantially, but not our friendship. Inevitably, both families returned to the San Diego area, where mutual cancers changed our lives. As a measure of this man, Steve would deliver firewood to our home in North County every fall.
Please join me in taking a few quiet moments as homage to this wonderful individual.
A. Lee Brown, Ph.D.Author, professor emeritus, research geohydrologistSan Diego
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