Frederick "Skip" V. Garretson

 

 

 

 

May 3, 1934 -July 10, 1981

Award winning reporter Fred “Skip” Garretson, 47, whose stories helped inspire campaigns to preserve San Francisco Bay, has died of heart failure at Oakland's Kaiser Hospital after surgery on a stomach ulcer. 

 Fred was born Frederick Van Hon Garretson on May 3, 1934, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His father, Gilbert Issac Garretson, was a journalism professor, and his mother, Ethel Elizabeth Garretson, spent time as a newspaper editor, a parole officer, school teacher and a congressional intern. Fred was survived by his wife, Maureen, of El Cerrito, and a son Cornelius "Con" Garretson, a former reporter for the Marin Independent Journal and the Oakland Piedmonter, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 35. Fred also had a brother; Gilbert Issac Garretson Jr. who later died in 1986 also at the age of 47.

 Fred was laid to rest at Richmond, Contra Costa, California

He spent his entire career with the Oakland Tribune, starting as a copy boy in 1954. Along the way, he won a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, twice won Edward J. Meeman conservation Awards from Scripps-Howard Foundation and was given a distinguished public affairs reporting award by the American Political Sciences Association.

The Scripps-Howard judges credited Garretson with “what's now known as the 'Save the Bay' conservation drive.

Until Garretson got going on his typewriter, there was little public recognition of the fact that San Francisco Bay, one of the wonders of the world, almost certainly was headed for an eventual future as a mudflat,” the judges said.

Garretson also wrote inspirational articles to save and preserve the Oakland Estuary and the coastal wetlands.

While working on a story about the Hayward Fault, Garretson discovered a previously unknown branch of the fault. A geologist verified the find and named it the Garretson Creep Zone – a term the reporter found, humorous, according to colleagues.

Garretson Point at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline is named in Garretson's honor. There is a picnic area at the site with White Alder, Western Sycamore, Eucalyptus and Acacia trees.

 In April, 1975, Garretson and Tribune photographer Robert Stinnett went to Vietnam before the fall of Saigon to cover a mercy mission where as many orphans as possible were brought back to the United States on a World Airways 747 jet. World Airways was owned by Ed Daly and based in Oakland. The Tribune published a series of baby lift stories in the week of April 12, 1975.

   Contribution information by John Simmonds