By Marianne Diffenderfer, wife
Part One: The Early Years
I came to California from Oklahoma after graduating from college with a major in art, and not
long after I took up residence in Berkeley, Ed’s path and mine began to connect in unexpected
ways. Through a family connection, I was able to show my art portfolio at Logan and Cox, the
art agency where Ed worked, but since my portfolio consisted of only life drawings, I wasn’t
hired. However, Ed and I met, so the day wasn’t wasted.
Our second meeting was when I dropped into the Berkeley Congregational church one Sunday
morning and saw him taking up the collection. This guy’s pretty good-looking, I thought, and
judging from that plateful of dollar bills in his hand, looks like he’s got money.
At that time I was taking any number of part-time jobs while taking classes to acquire a
California teaching credential. Most of the classes were at CCAC, California College of Arts &
Crafts in Oakland, and the third time Ed’s and my paths crossed, it was there. He was teaching
classes in illustration which I modeled for (clothed). Occasionally, when class was over, Ed
offered to take me home. We dated for a few months, got engaged, and were married in 1954.
Later, Ed said he’d hoped, since I was from Oklahoma, that there were acres of gushing oil wells
in my background. It turned out neither of us came from money; nevertheless we managed to
stay married for sixty-five years— and still counting.
Born in Stockton, California, and raised in Berkeley, Ed Diffenderfer attended California College
of Arts and Crafts from 1946 through 1950. In the 50’s and 60’s, he worked at the San Francisco
art agency Logan & Cox, which was headed by Society of Six painter Maurice Logan. Other
illustrators there at the time were Larry Rehag and Joe Cleary, and the Cleary family and ours
became lifelong friends.
Gradually, Ed’s career blossomed. When he decided to leave the agency to go free-lance, he
shared space with adman Rene Weaver; later he rented space on Gold St. with artists John
Lichtenwalner and Stan Dann. During this time, Ed became part of a competitive but convivial
group of illustrators. Besides Lichtenwalner and Dann, there were Jim Sanford, Ray Ward, Dick
Cole, Dick Moore, John Larrecq, Norm Nicholson, David Grove, Bill Shields, Bruce Wolfe, Chris
Kenyon, and Jack Bradbury. All were in Ed’s circle of friends, and laughter was the order of the
day. Ed was elected president of the San Francisco Society of Illustrators in 1966 and served for
one year.
A notable part of Ed’s life has been his passion for music. Playing jazz trombone in the Jinks
Band of the Bohemian Club for many years strengthened his ties to other musicians, and this
was an important part of his life.
Part Two: Career Highlights
During his long career, Ed scored some valuable clients. In the 60’s he was commissioned by
architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and the Washington Beautification
Commission—Lady Bird Johnson as figurehead—to illustrate the newly redesigned National
Mall. Like actors, free-lance illustrators are never sure where the next job is coming from.
Luckily, a commission to illustrate a brochure for the Embarcadero Center arrived. The Center
was developed by Trammell Crow, David Rockefeller and John Portman, and was a huge
complex, with five office towers, two hotels, and an underground shopping center with stores,
bars and restaurants.
Not long after that, Ed did a series of sports portraits for Sears Roebuck representing every area
of sport; Ted Williams, Edmund Hillary, and Bob Mathias were three in the series of twenty-five
athletes. I remember Ed coming home from photographing Ted Williams in Los Angeles with
the story of how Williams insisted on showing him how to take a picture. In my opinion, Ed’s
portrait of Edmund Hillary, set against the majestic Himalayas, was the most outstanding
painting of the series.
Ed was asked to do a mural for Barclay’s Bank of London with scenes from all over the world,
wherever the bank was represented. He painted the 51-ft.-long mural in sections on our deck in
Oakland, and later the mural was hung to great fanfare on Pine St. Twenty-five ears later, when
we wanted to show it to visiting relatives, it had disappeared! Barclay’s Bank had moved. Did
they take the mural with them? What happened to it? We’ll never know.
Ed went to New York several times to get work, succeeding with Reader’s Digest and Argosy
Magazine. One adman wanted him to do an assignment from his hotel room, but Ed said he
hadn’t brought his brushes.
In the 70’s our kids were growing up, and college costs loomed. Agriculture is key to California’s
great economic success, and luckily Ed got work from the Bank of America, traveling with
Fresno adman George Thomas all over California to do a series of farmers’ portraits for B of A.
One visit was to the Sebastiani Vineyards in Sonoma, where Sylvia Sebastiani gave Ed a copy of
her cookbook Mangiano (Let’s Eat!). I still treasure her recipes. Chevron World, another trade
publication, used Ed’s work multiple times, and one of the most memorable articles he
illustrated for them was about creativity. Maya Angelou, Bill Moyers, Norman Lear, and Placido
Domingo were profiled, and Ed did a montage of their portraits for the magazine.
From boyhood, Ed had an intense interest in airplanes, and his enthusiasm for anything
connected with flying was brought to fruition with the United States Air Force Art Program,
begun in 1950. The program sent artists to military facilities and exercises in order to record
events in paintings. Illustrators from New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco were sent all over
the world to US Air Force bases. Ed went to Japan and various other countries. (You can Google
Ed Diffenderfer to see his painting Mission of Mercy/Timbuktu.) There was a social side to all
this: Ed and I, along with other illustrators and wives attended Air Force show openings at
Part Three: The Later Years
Travis AFB in California and Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, DC. It was a big deal! At the
latter, the Air Force band performed, and many top brass were in attendance.
Later, Ed and Lowell Herrero went to Cape Canaveral to commemorate the Apollo 9 lift-off of
March 3, 1969. The mission was flown to qualify the module for lunar orbit operations in
preparation for the first moon landing.
In another government project, Ed went to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, to research rebel John
Brown for the National Park Service’s ARTS IN THE PARKS program. This resulted in Ed’s fine
portrait of the intense and turbulent abolitionist leader.
After retiring in 2000, Ed began his second career, landscape painting. In California he painted
Yosemite and the wine country, and he did many paintings of Bodie, a mining ghost town. On
the East coast, he painted Block Island, and after we traveled in Europe, he did paintings of
chateaux on the Loire, as well as French and Italian country scenes. Back home, he became
interested in lighthouses. We traveled to several California lighthouses, which he photographed
and subsequently painted.
I have been the lucky recipient of Ed’s art during our marriage. These include birthday and
Mother’s Day cards, usually in the form of cartoons. But his greatest kindness was in doing the
covers for my novels The Wind Came Running, The Putneyville Fables, and All Kinds of Beauty.
(pen name Marianne Gage). In other family connections, my brother Stan Hoig, Oklahoma
historian and journalist, commissioned Ed to do the cover for one of his many books: The
Kiowas and the Legend of Kicking Bird.
As I write this, Ed has just celebrated his 92 nd birthday. He is surrounded by some of his favorite
paintings: among them his painting of Teddy Roosevelt; a poster/montage of Jack Lemmon; and
one of his boat paintings. He is content and fulfilled, not only because he has son Craig and
daughter Katy; grandsons Alex, Judd and Butch; and great-grandchildren Nathaniel and Athena,
but because he has had a long and challenging life as an artist.
—Marianne Hoig Diffenderfer
January, 2020
