Friday, Jan. 29, 2010
John Spevak: Good architect, good guy
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ReprintLos Baños has lost a man of gentle soul and dynamic imagination, a person who made our community a more beautiful place.
Bob Beharka, who died earlier this month at the age of 83, may have been the most talented architect ever to have lived in Los Baños. He was a man with depth of wisdom as well as breadth of knowledge.
Last week Enterprise reporter Samantha Salas wrote an excellent article about Bob, which included many details of his life. In today's column I'd like to talk about my own personal experiences with Bob, whom I admired, respected, and appreciated.
I first met Bob when I was teaching at the Los Baños Campus of Merced College in the mid 1970's. At that time I was team-teaching a class with Anita Cianfichi called Visual and Verbal Expression.
One of our field trips was to the Buck Fawcett home south of town on Center Ave. I hadn't known, until then, that the Los Baños area had a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of my favorite architects.
Anita knew Bob, who had worked for Wright and directed the construction of that house, and asked him to give our class a tour. Bob, along with Buck and Harriet Fawcett, agreed.
Bob struck me immediately as a kind and gentle person. As he continued to talk about the home and the man who designed it (whom he always called "Mr. Wright"), Bob became more animated and expansive.
I saw in Bob a man who loved what he was doing, who recognized how architecture, if done well, could create a space of energy and tranquility that brings delight to people who live within it.
Later I came to know Bob when he enrolled in a class I taught on American literature. Bob was a well educated man who didn't need the credits. He came into the class because of his love for the American transcendentalists, Henry Thoreau and especially Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Bob glowed when he talked about Emerson's thoughts on self-reliance and the ability of each person to tap into a limitless reservoir of wisdom and energy and beauty.
As I came to know Bob better, I recognized just how talented he was. I understood why, when Bob was an apprentice to the master architect, he had earned Wright's admiration, appreciation, and affection.
Then I looked more closely at the buildings Bob himself had designed in Los Baños, especially the two buildings people readily notice when they enter Los Baños from the west -- the Wolfsen building and the Central California Irrigation District offices, both located off I St. on either side of Pacheco Boulevard.
I realized how much I enjoyed looking at these buildings, how they were a part of the land on which they were built and how their clean lines and organic design lifted my spirits whenever I passed by.
I noticed too, when Bob spoke about architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright -- to a college class or a service club -- how much he knew about the history and principles of architecture. He could talk for hours about this, his favorite subject; and I could listen for hours.
Despite all of his talent and accomplishments, Bob was a humble man. He never boasted about his abilities. In fact, he would chuckle whenever I mentioned how much he had done for Los Baños; Bob said he was just doing what he liked.
I came to know Bob, and his wife Delores, better when the Beharkas and Spevaks had kids on the Los Baños Tiger Sharks swim team. Few people I've known had such devotion and dedication to family. Bob and Delores gave so much love to their daughters. When Delores died from cancer a number of years ago, Bob was understandably heartbroken.
I was impressed when Bob later became a substitute teacher for the Los Baños Unified School District. I wondered how such a quiet man could control a roomful of kids who usually treat substitutes roughly. When I asked Bob about this, he just smiled and said that he had a way of developing good relationships with the students.
And most recently, when I interviewed Bob for the Characters of Los Baños series, I discovered other remarkable things about him. I learned about his determination to work for the best architect in the country, so much so that he drove his old Pontiac from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and later Arizona, where Wright lived and worked, so that he could be Wright's apprentice.
It was a treat to talk with Bob in his home, a building he had lovingly designed and of which he was proud, as he was of all of his work. It was a delight, too, to see Bob page through his many notebooks, where he recorded his creative ideas and designs in their many drafts.
What a remarkable man Bob was. How grateful I am for having known him.
I hope that our Milliken Museum of local history will develop a Bob Beharka display, so that present and future residents of Los Baños will understand and appreciate how fortunate our town was to have Bob live and work within our community.
On another note: I am pleased that the Los Baños High School's History Club is honoring Charles Sawyer on Jan. 30. Charles, more than anyone else in our town, has kept local history alive and thriving.
Comments on the writings of John Spevak, a regular Enterprise columnist, are encouraged and can be sent via email to spevak@telis.org.