My wife and I went for a small trip to Monterey recently. It's one of my favorite places in the world. My mother was born and raised in Monterey. My sister and I visited our grandparents frequently.
When she was very little my sister coined the name Murnie ("mer-knee"). Murnie, we believe, was her attempting to say the word "Monterey." I guess, to a small child, Monterey and the man who lives in Monterey, were one and the same; they both inspired the same feelings of love and wonder. So from that day forward, our grandfather was and always was Murnie to us. To this day, when I think of him, I think of Murnie. Not Eugene C. Haderlie, not Professor Haderlie, not grandpa, grandfather, etc. Just Murnie.
Monterey is a key part of our childhood memories. And Murnie's love of the natural world was absolutely key to our love of him and the city. I'll let his obituary from the Monterey Herald do a better job of summarizing his life than me, as he did so very, very much.
"Eugene C. Haderlie
March 23, 1921 - January 1, 2015
He received his PhD from U.C. Berkeley in 1950; and was part of the Monterey marine biology community for over 60 years. He taught at the Naval Postgraduate School of Monterey, at U.C. Berkeley, and at Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station on the Monterey Peninsula. He was the co-author of Intertidal Invertebrates of California, published by Stanford University Press in 1980; a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, and served on the first board of trustees of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In WWII he was a Navy diver under British command defusing underwater mines in the English Channel, and was part of the first assault on Utah Beach on D-Day. He was a world traveler, a skilled carpenter, and a great lover of the natural world — a born teacher who always retained his sense of wonder about the world around him and the creatures in it, particularly his beloved dogs."
Please enjoy some of the photos I took while visiting. They're of the animals he used to take us to go see in his beloved aquarium. It is bittersweet returning. However, I think of the otter I saw in captivity happily bashing its toy against the glass window to expose the food inside, and it shakes me a bit of the gravity of losing loved ones; nature can be humorous as well.
