Carl Allen Fairfield
March 19, 1938 – September 24, 2024

Carl Allen Fairfield, 86, passed away peacefully at home on a sunny afternoon encircled by family and friends. He will be remembered as a loving husband, dad, stepdad, granddaddy, papa and spiritual seeker with a kind heart, a concern for community care, and a sweet sense of humor until the very end. Carl joked that he was an avid indoorsman — he loved redwood trees and foggy mornings, as long as he could gaze at them through the window from his comfy chair with a cup of coffee.

Carl was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Leona Craig Fairfield and John Buchanan Fairfield, the only child of two only children. He was raised in part by his grandparents Carl William Fairfield (Pop Pop) and Grace Mae George Fairfield (Mom Mom) in Guthrie, Oklahoma. He also spent several childhood years in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating top of his class at Tulsa Central High, he hurried away from the Great Plains to attend Princeton University on scholarship. At Princeton, he majored in psychology and minored in art, two of his lifelong interests. A summer job with an oil company in the gulf turned him off from that line of work forever; he remembers in those days they were required to stir crude oil with their bare hands. During a year off, he moved to New York City and worked as a page at NBC, welcoming guests to live tapings of programs like Johnny Carson and the Howdy Doody Show.

After college, upon hearing he was about to be drafted, Carl joined the Navy and was sent to officer training school after boot camp. Lieutenant (junior grade) Carl served as a radar officer on the USS Cogswell DD651 and did a tour of duty in the Pacific. He served in between US involvement in the Korean and the Vietnam Wars, and often said he was glad they never made him kill anyone. One of his most vivid memories from his service was a visit to the Great Buddha of Kamakura in Japan. Entering the three-stories-tall bronze sculpture of Amitābha, he had a transformative experience that drew him towards Buddhism and into relationship with the Amitābha deity. A more difficult navy memory was the Cuban Missile Crisis, when his squadron escorted a group of Marines from Camp Pendleton to the Panama Canal. This was one of the moments when the Cold War seemed to be heating up, and Carl recalled hearing about Russian subs prowling around armed with nuke-tipped torpedoes. After determining that the sailor’s life wasn’t for him, he traded two additional years in the service for shore duty, which brought him to the US Torpedo Base in Keyport, Washington just in time for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. There, he served as BOQ officer and Special Services officer and was trained in planning enrichment and entertainment for special populations.

After finishing in the service, Carl relocated to Northern California in search of alternative community and meaningful work. He worked at the Mendocino State Mental Hospital with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and then as a preschool teacher in Berkeley. He moved briefly to Pasadena, where he studied early childhood education at Pacific Oaks College. There he met and married his first wife, Susan Krause née Williams and welcomed becoming the stepfather to her children Alan, Susie and Michael. Being a stepparent was very important to Carl. With that family, he moved to Humboldt County in 1970, landing in Westhaven, where they connected with the Quaker community and secretly housed draft dodgers. Carl used the GI bill to enroll in a master’s program in Family, Child, and Marriage Counseling, an outreach program from the University of San Francisco taught by local professionals in Eureka.

When his first marriage concluded, he courted and married the love of his life, Ruth Puckett Ziemer, a nurse from Southern California. Carl and Ruth met working as volunteer therapists at the Open Door Clinic in 1973, and then studied together in the same graduate school program. They were married in the backyard of their Fickle Hill home in 1978 by his dear friend Reverend Robert Talmadge. Carl was a proud stepparent to Ruth’s two daughters, Tanya and Aimee Ziemer, with whom he was closely connected for the rest of his life. After finishing his degree, Carl used his people skills and organizing talents at the Humboldt Senior Resource Center, where he worked as activities director for 20 years. In this role, he coordinated events, speakers, and travel opportunities for elders in the community. Despite being a somewhat shy person, Carl was known for his ability to communicate clearly and warmly with elders from across political and social spectrums.

Despite being a member of the Silent Generation, Carl was ahead of the times in several ways. With the birth of his daughter Joy Brooke Fairfield in 1981, he became interested in video recording technology. In addition to using his new VHS camera to tape his family and friends, he recorded events (first at the Senior Center, and then in other venues around town) and then submitted them to Arcata Community Access Television. Carl figured it was an easy way to help house-bound seniors get free access to education and entertainment via their TVs. He was a major contributor to local Public Access during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, with a focus on history and local theatre productions. He was not above submitting some home videos for broadcast as well; locals might remember seeing “Aimee goes to college” and “Joy breaks her wrist playing soccer” late at night on channel 11. Some of Carl’s last years were spent using YouTube to explore his lifelong interests in spirituality, astronomy, and politics, and his family likes to say that he was into video sharing platforms before they were cool. Carl was also an assiduous researcher prior to online search engines. Calling himself “a desk guy,” his home office reflected his commitment to ongoing study. He took his special interests quite seriously, including the family’s genealogy, coin collecting, Course in Miracles, astrology, local Native history, film history, and Tibetan Buddhism. Being on a path of spiritual practice and study together with his beloved wife of 46 years was a core part of Carl’s identity, something that brought meaning to his life and grace to his death.

Carl was also ahead of the times when it came to his belief in women’s leadership. He looked up to his wife, his daughters, his spiritual women friends, and he looked forward to finally having a woman president. Until the last days of his life, he was asking if his ballot had arrived in the mail. In his honor, please vote in this pivotal election, and please love and support the women, children, and elderly people in your life.

In an obituary he wrote for himself a few decades before his death, Carl said: “The eternal entity which incarnated as Carl Allen Fairfield willingly dropped his body and entered into his next growth stage after blessing all his acquaintances, friends, and relatives. If he neglected to make amends to any fellow life sojourners, he hopes to do so now in absentia.”

Carl is survived by his wife Ruth Puckett Fairfield, his children Joy Brooke Fairfield (Valentina Perez), Aimee Ziemer Markham (Jay Markham), and Tanya Ziemer Trump, whose dear husband Gordon Trump passed away last October. He is also survived by his grandchildren Miles Markham, Elias Markham, Ian Trump, and Connor Trump (Michelle Dickey), as well as his stepchildren Alan E. Krause (Alice Krause and children), Susan Jenkins (Chad Jenkins and children) and Michael Krause (and family), and his sister-in-law Katherine Kern Puckett Layton.

A memorial ceremony will be held on November 10, 2024 at 3 p.m. at the Humboldt Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Bayside. Please contact the family for more information. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Food for People, Humboldt County: www.foodforpeople.org.