A media release from Save Our Heritage Organization
based on an interview Parker did with Jarmusch and Soderberg in 2009.
PHOTO: Robert Miles Parker in the 1980’s: self-portrait,
courtesy Save Our Heritage Organization.
Save Our Heritage
Organization (SOHO) was sad to receive word of the passing of our
founder Robert Miles Parker from his longtime partner, David Vanleer.
Miles spoke about his founding of SOHO with great pride: “I don’t think about
pride much. I don’t think about that stuff...but I am prouder than I know how
to define the word. It is pretty amazing to look at what SOHO is doing still.”
Miles was a colorful,
charismatic, and outspoken man. A renowned artist, his drawings have been
published in magazines and newspapers such as San Diego Magazine, Sacramento Magazine and the New York Times, and collected in the books Images of
American Architecture (1982), L.A. (1984), and Upper West Side: New York (1988). His work garnered him national attention,
including two appearances on the Today Show with Barbara
Walters. Additionally, he taught art at both Adult Night School and at College
level.
Miles began SOHO with a
sign on a plain board that he put up at the Sherman-Gilbert House reading “Save
This House” along with his phone number. “A billion people called,” he
remembered. “I had no plans for that … evidently a whole lot of people felt the
way I did.”
He saved all the money he
earned teaching for travel. “My plan was to always travel,” he said. “I could
never get a normal job; I just couldn’t be structured.” Miles had just returned
from hitchhiking around Europe for a year when he heard about plans to tear
down the Sherman-Gilbert House and replace it with a “two-story cement beast.”
Miles recalled the very
first SOHO meeting: “I’d like to think it was about 50 people showing up at my
house on a rainy dreary early January Sunday afternoon in 1969.” He told the
gathering, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what WE’RE going to do. It
was Carol Lindemulder who kicked me and said, ‘Well, you’re going to start
an organization, and your life will forever be different.’ She was right, it
was forever different, certainly in a better way.”
Robert Miles Parker
credited his caring for his neighborhood and city to his Southern upbringing.
“I was born in the South, of a billion generations of Southerners.” He spoke
about being taught to respect country, society, and community, but to do things
for the community. “I grew up believing, still, that we have an obligation to
take care of our place. We have to make it better. We have to do that...I just
think it is my duty to do my job. And SOHO was my job!”
He spoke about his love
for the city, and it was his interpretation of San Diego history that shaped
his views as a historic preservationist. “San Diego, I think, is a holy place.
Madame Blavatsky (through the mission of Madame Tingley’s Theosophical
Society in Point Loma) was here. The Rosicrucians were here. The
Indians considered this holy land. The first settlers, I think appreciated
that. I think the monied families, like the Klaubers, appreciated that, and
built wonderful things. Jessop comes to mind. Walker Scott comes to mind. But
then the next generation didn’t care and began to tear them down. And I don’t
think anyone has cared since.”
“In the old days it was the ‘geranium growers’ vs. the
developers. I came here in the 1940’s as a little boy. It was the ‘geranium
growers’ who were in power, and it was such a neat place. It was just so comfy.
I think it is interesting the city went from being a holy place to a place of
destruction. So it is our battle to pull it back.”
Miles spoke about his role
as SOHO founder. “I delegated like mad. There were Carol Lindemulder and Nick
Fintzelberg who understood money and land, all the things that never interested
me. All I had to do was to be outrageous, which is my nature, so I didn’t have
to do anything! Except of course I really believed in what was happening. It
became more than saving the Sherman-Gilbert House, it became about saving the
city.”
“I discovered when I
traveled around if there weren’t a little Miles Parker there, then the city was
doomed. But there were Miles Parkers. I met one in St. Louis who saved his
neighborhood. I met one in Washington. I met one in Northern California. But it
didn’t happen if there wasn’t a rebel rouser. Most places didn’t have it, and
most places are horrible looking. We were lucky. San Diego was lucky. We were
all lucky.”
Miles eventually left San
Diego to live in New York City. “I had super adventures as a San Diegan. But I
spent all my years in San Diego battling, I think.”
Rest in peace,
Miles. We’re proud to carry on the battle for you, the battle you so
passionately fought. You inspired us all.
