Growing up, I was always a little bit in awe of
Jack Sutro. When I was nine his son Steve and
I were best friends. Then "Mister" Sutro (I'm 37
today and it still doesn't feel right calling him
'Jack' to his face) ran a tight ship.
Using a 1970's TV analogy -- if my other friends'
homes resembled everything from All in the
Family to Eight Is Enough (with all the Marin
stereotypes of hot tubs and divorce thrown in to
boot) the Sutro home was definitely Happy Days
(minus The Fonz and any sort of shenanigans).
Steve even looked like Ritchie Cunningham!
As I grew older, I began to view Mr. Sutro as far
more than an iconoclastic figure in the vein of
Howard Cunningham -- great father, loving
husband, and an avid 49er fan who wore red and
gold on Sundays to support his team. Jack
stood for something more -- a higher ideal -- and
everyone knew him to be a gentleman, a brilliant
lawyer and a no-nonsense hero of justice in both
the courtroom and our community.
Today Judge Sutro sits on the Marin Superior
Court and was kind enough to share a few
thoughts on his nostalgic memories of Marin:
"I like beef," says Sutro, "and we used to go to
the Victoria Station located near where the
Marin Airporter is today in Larkspur Landing ". It
was "a really neat place" he remembers because
"they created a restaurant out of a bunch of railroad cars, which was unique."
He recalls dining inside an authentic looking train car "but it didn't have any
windows to the outside so it wasn't like a dining car. You sat in booths and it
was rather narrow." His favorite item on the menu: "They had great burgers!"
"Another place that (my wife) Loulie and I really liked," recalls the Judge,
"was La Petit Auberge" a French restaurant in San Rafael on the East End
of town where Indian restaurant Lotus currently resides.
"That was great," he says, "They had a moving ceiling they would roll open
in the summer and it would be 'open air'." In the late 60's and early 70's,
Sutro says, "that was our special night out and generally we would stay there
and close the place."
The Sutro family always kept traditions and I remember spending a
particularly fun breakfast with them around 1979 at the Kentfield Fireman's
Pancake Breakfast.
"It's a Marin tradition and something we've been doing every year since the
early 1970's," Sutro says proudly. "Although that was back in the days when
I could eat all that stuff. I was ignorant about what it was doing to my
body."
Today, despite the high carbs, butter and syrup , the Judge and his family
continue the firehouse tradition. Yet now, his children bring their own
children to the breakfast and "everyone gets up on the fire truck," he says.
"It's a great fundraiser."
