Remembering Art Pierson

ART PIERSON, 1944 – 2007

I’d like to say a few words about my friend and our brother, Art Pierson, who finally succumbed to pancreatic cancer after a two-year battle. His picture is on the lower right corner of our brochure, with grizzled white hair and beard and a Sacred Path cap. I’m sure those of you who attended the fall retreat a year and a half ago remember Art. He was the focal point of one of the most moving and powerful healing ceremonies ever held at a retreat, where all the participants gathered around him during a Saturday night ritual and held him for a long, long time, sharing our vitality with him. We all felt healed and moved to an extent far beyond my experience.

Art never forgot that night or the retreats. For him, they had taken on a holy quality. They were a reason for him to stay alive. In the midst of his second round of chemotherapy where he was down to 120 pounds, he sent in an application to the next retreat. When we e-mailed or talked on the phone, he was always looking forward to the next trip up the mountain, although when the time came, he was always too weak to travel. He’d tell me to hold his deposit and application for the next go-round. Well, he never made it back to the mountain, having died on November 30 of 2007, but I can assure you that his thoughts were seldom of anything else.

Art and I were good friends from 1972 until he died. We would sit on the curb together watching the July 4th parade in Evanston while sipping Mimosas. I wrote music scores for him when he was a clay animator working out of a 110-degree garage in Evanston, Illinois, and I worked with him when he owned the advertising agency that had Ace Hardware for a client. He went way, way up in his career, and fell even farther at the end, but I never once heard him complain or say a self-pitying word throughout his ordeal in business or with cancer.

Art was a Renaissance Man, held two degrees in fine arts, was a great cook, a carpenter, a welder, a connoisseur of fine beers, a shrewd businessman, and a good friend. There are few who would be able to fill his shoes in so many capacities. I will miss his energy, his sense of humor, his candor.

I know that his spirit will be with us at future retreats, where it has longed to be. Rest well, brother. 

- Rich Manners