By John Pearson —
This summer—before I had connected the proverbial dots—I was halfway through lunch at Wahoo’s Fish Taco with Mark Ellis. We had met previously, but this was our first lunch together. Mark mentioned something about his earlier years—and I interrupted him!
“Wait! You’re friends with Dave Barton and on Dave’s suggestion, you sent me your book back in 2021, right?” (After a major bookshelf-organizing project with two of our granddaughters, Mark’s book, The House at Channing and Moonsail had magically reappeared in my library!)
I’ve listed this book in my Crisis Bucket for many reasons.
CRISIS! Oh, my. I was so embarrassed. I had never read the book, never reviewed it, and here I was sitting with the author who had generously sent me his book. Even worse—he bought my lunch!
Fast forward: Today, I can now document that I have read this page-turning book by Mark Ellis. The back cover blurb is an excellent summary: “This coming-of-age quest for meaning and romance careens through Berkeley in the ‘70s and Orange County in the early ‘80s.”
Here’s my take on Mark’s gutsy and transparent autobiographical look-in-the-mirror:
UC BERKELEY. Imagine…the tuition at the University of California, Berkeley in September 1973 was only $212 per quarter! UC Berkeley was the destination for Mark Ellis who boards the L.A. train north for his freshman year. Picture him in flip flops, a colorful Hawaiian shirt, and curly brown hair “bleached mostly blond.” This tennis player/teacher and surfer from Rolling Hills was ready to roll. Crisis? (Stay tuned.)
THE 70s. If you were a college student in the 60s and 70s, you may remember the sights, sounds, and smells: weed, beer, computer punch cards, panty raids and worse, Joni Mitchell, and mid-terms and finals. Ellis landed on a shortcut to academic success as a business major. “I hit on an ingenious solution in my mind: cheating, something I had never resorted to in high school. But the pressure I felt from all these stellar minds in one place and the fear of failure drove me into the arms of ethical compromise.”
He adds, “Admittedly, my moral compass was not well-formed. Neither of my parents had any church background nor devoted any time to instructing about ethics and morality.”
He writes that the cheating and heavy partying… “all gave me a vague unease that was brushed off with the idea, prevalent at the time, that a new morality was emerging of situational ethics, unmoored from the rusty, worn-out traditions of the past.”
“’If it felt good, do it’ was the thought, as long as you weren’t hurting someone else.”
You get the idea (and the PG13 details are in his book!). Ellis walks us through Berkeley dorm life and then frat life in his sophomore year. Not initially realizing he had leadership abilities, Mark eventually becomes the president of his fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta, the “Fiji House” on Channing Circle.
Along the way he weaves in and out of his own story to spotlight current events—often fascinating: the Patty Hearst kidnapping, the Pancho Gonzales (age 43) vs. Jimmy Connors (age 19) tennis match, and sitting behind Andy Williams in a courtroom when the “Moon River” singer’s wife, Claudine Longet, was on trial for murder! Plus, he and Cal freshman quarterback Vince Ferragamo were in the same calculus class—before this future L.A. Ram transferred to Nebraska, “a place where they worship football.”
Unclear on what he worshiped, Mark tilted towards a colleague of Timothy Leary, Baba Ram Dass (aka Dr. Richard Albert, Ph.D., a former Harvard prof) and his bestselling book. Ellis writes, “Because I had turned away from traditional religion, I was open to the Eastern path promulgated by Ram Dass and rushed out to buy his book, which resonated with me and became my go-to guide for soul care.” Some 1,300 students, teachers and others listened to his three-hour lecture at Berkeley.
Here’s an idea you won’t share with your college-age kids and grandkids: take a year off from UC Berkeley and become a ski bum in Aspen, Colo. Oh, and when the snow melts—head to Hawaii and work on a banana plantation! (Oops! Another crisis in Mark’s journey.)
GOOD NEWS. Mark returns to Berkeley a year later and then in his senior year, as fraternity president, he flies to Ohio State to attend a Fiji Leadership Academy. And get this: the legendary Buckeyes football coach, Woody Hayes, speaks to this group of 30 to 40 student leaders. Mark was inspired and quotes the coach for two pages and mentions the book that Hayes gave to every student athlete, Word Power Made Easy.
Coach Hayes: “In football, you learn there’s nothing that comes easy that’s worth a dime. As a matter of fact, I never saw a football player make a tackle with a smile on his face. Never!”
Mark Ellis: “When Coach Hayes finished his talk, I was ready to follow him anywhere. Even though I played only one year of freshman football in high school, I wanted to join his team in the worst way … I could volunteer to carry the water just to be around the man, I thought.”
Ellis graduates from Berkeley but his parents are too busy to attend the commencement ceremony so he skips the cap and gown show. Fast forward: a career in commercial real estate (following in his successful father’s footsteps) and the 1980 presidential campaign. His econ classes at Berkeley influenced his alignment with the Republican congressman from Rockford, Ill., John Anderson, who was running as an independent. So he dropped in on a local campaign organizing meeting.
CRISIS! By this time in this fascinating narrative, Mark was “24, with abundant energy and enthusiasm, wearing a suit…” and apparently asked “semi-intelligent questions.” Thus another crisis: the dozen or so attendees drafted Ellis to lead the Orange County campaign for John Anderson! (See his must-read chapters on the campaign and why “politicians should never use the word incipient.”)
The author transparently invites us into his career in commercial real estate and his dating life (including his successes, missteps, and disappointments). At his father’s urging (when his dad “delivered a harsh dose of reality”), Mark exits his parent’s comfortable home and buys a 900-square-foot townhome on Moonsail Drive in “Niguel Shores, a private, gated community that straddled Pacific Coast Highway near Salt Creek”—his favorite surfing spot and just a 10-minute walk to the beach. Life was good! (The book has two sections—titled for his two houses: the frat house on Channing and the townhome on Moonsail. I loved the format: 52 short chapters.)
Then this. The agent that sold him the townhome on Moonsail told Mark about a singles group at Mariners Church in Newport Beach. He confesses, “I had no interest in God…” but Mark thought, “…maybe I would meet some single women a few notches higher in quality than the ones I met in bars.” At his first meeting, he notes: “God was not on my radar, but scores of attractive blondes and brunettes had my sudden attention.”
I’m so delighted that Mark Ellis wrote this book. I had no idea about his earlier life experiences decades ago:
• Who knew? He does impressions of Jimmy Stewart! Also: “Cary Grant, Clark Gable, JFK jawing with his brother Teddy, FDR, Jimmy Carter, and others.”
• Mark has a creative bent. He began painting on the side and rented space for a small art gallery in Laguna Beach ($300 a month) and employed “young, attractive females to watch the gallery during the day and paid them the minimum wage” while he worked in his real estate office in Irvine.
I appreciate gifted writing and Ellis is a superb word crafter. Recounting his meeting with Woody Hayes: “The coach looked like a heftier, meatpacking version of LBJ.” Describing his “apolitical registered Republican” parents in 1965, “they heard Ronald Reagan speak at a local restaurant and came home like the fishermen who had seen Jesus for the first time.”
REDEMPTION
About halfway through the book, I told Mark, “I’m still waiting for the redemptive chapter!” I won’t give you a spoiler alert here, but…fast forward…at the Mariners Church singles gathering, “a guy named Dave was leading the study. Before he began his talk he said, ‘I just finished a book I want to recommend: Evidence That Demands a Verdict, by Josh McDowell.’” Mark adds, “I filed the name away in my head, thinking it might be something I should read.”
Oh…one more thing from that night. Mark meets Sally (a Princess Diana look-alike) in the
small group discussion segment of the meeting (a circle of five), but reflects, “Oh, no. I don’t need another blond in my life.”
I hope that teaser prompts you to read this book. Here’s a hint. And…what’s the rest of the story? Read Mark’s bio today and watch for my review of his next book later this year.
To order from Amazon, click on the title for The House at Channing and Moonsail, by Mark Ellis. For more reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting. And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.
© 2024. John Pearson Associates. All rights reserved.
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