Norman de Vall and Rick Sacks

Mendocino recently lost two beloved residents, both of whom had a special connection to the Kelley House Museum. Norman de Vall and Rick Sacks will be missed by many in the community.

In late 2019, the Kelley House exhibited “Wind & Water: The Nautical Collection of Norman de Vall.” The exhibit showcased antique coastal charts, a large brass compass, a caulking mallet and irons, navigational implements, and more from Norman’s collection. Norman began collecting nautical items in his childhood. By the time he was 27, he had spent three years in the Oakland shipyards in the preservation of historic ships such as C.A. Thayer, Steam Schooner Wapama, Ferryboat Eureka, and Scow Schooner Alma. He worked as a tugboat deckhand, a stevedore superintendent, and earned a B.A. with a Minor in Ocean Transportation.

In Norman’s own words, his “dream was to build or buy a sailing cargo ship. Stevedoring enabled me to share the lives of longshoremen, crew members, masters, mates and pilots, but few had actually sailed. Those who had inspired something anew. Again, by good chance, I was asked to survey vessels in Iceland and Norway on my way to study stevedoring at the London School of Economics. En route, I came upon small sailing cargo ships, still able to carry out their reason for being, and so I initiated the FRI Project, which was to become ‘The last sailing cargo ship from North Europe to San Francisco.’

The Sailing Vessel (SV) FRI (pronounced “free”) was the last of many that might have so served, but FRI, laying in Aalborg, Denmark, had no match. She was by far the most ready to return to the open ocean. I obtained a 30-day option at .01percent of her sale price (or $80). I then reached out to friends and family for the rest. One month later we owned a ship, nine months later we sailed from Copenhagen for Scotland, and five months later sailed through the Golden Gate into San Francisco. After her oceanic crossing, FRI went on under a different owner to protest the French nuclear tests in the western Pacific. I returned to Mendocino.”

Rick Sacks was known to all who came to Mendocino, whether or not they knew it, from his work as the sign maker of the coast. Rick made all the Kelley House Museum signs, in addition to signs used in filming Hollywood productions like Murder, She Wrote. His impact reaches far and wide.

Rick moved to Mendocino in 1977, after working in sign shops in southern California. He worked through apprenticeship programs, learning artistic techniques like carving and gold leaf work from artists with varied backgrounds. In 2009, Rick appeared at the Kelley House for an event titled “Signs of the Coast,” where he discussed his work over the years. In this event, Rick talked about the first thing he painted on the Mendocino Coast that made him realize “he’d made it” here.

“Well, the first thing that comes to mind was my shop when I first came was in the harbor. I had my vision of being able to blend industry and art into two compatible communities and had invited several other artists to set up studios in the harbor. Floyd Winters came and Michael Logan and a few others. And that was working for a while, but I was lettering a lot of boats in Southern California. I really wanted to get back into that here.

I remember walking down a dock, and I was going down there to letter a boat for one of the high liners on a dock, and a guy looked at him [the boat owner] and said, ‘What are you going to do next year? You know, when this hippie is gone and out of business, you’re going to have something on your boat that nobody’s going to be able to reproduce.’ And that was the one that first kicked me over the edge of being accepted in that community.”

You can watch “Signs of the Coast” with Rick Sacks on the Kelley House Museum YouTube. This Saturday, May 16^th, join the Kelley House and Mendocino Land Trust for a guided walk on Big River Trail, led by MLT Stewardship Project Coordinator, Chase Aherns. Please RSVP on the Kelley House website. The Kelley House Museum is open Thursday-Monday, 11am-3pm.