Orchard Arts Blog

Dear Friends, 

We would like to thank you for your amazing support and generosity in honor of our daughter, Catherine Violet Hubbard. Your kindness and compassion have moved us beyond words and we are deeply grateful and touched by such an outpouring of love. 

When Catherine was two months old, we watched as she was wheeled from an operating room into recovery. As the surgeon laid a small stuffed purple mouse at the top of her bassinet, he smiled and said that she would be fine. That was the start of her love affair with animals. As she grew, more animals joined the purple mouse. The collection was so big that at night we would sift through the pile to uncover her face. As we shifted the pile, we could softly kiss her warm cheek one last time before turning down the lights. 

We look at her life and are not surprised that she is constantly surrounded by animals. She is sitting legs crossed in the middle of the yard, her hair falling on her face as she nuzzles our bunny in her lap. She is singing with the birds as she soars on her swing. She is scooting across the floor to be nose to nose with our dog. She is carefully toddling back to grab an animal she left behind. She is the animal fairy at her fairy party. She gallops through the house as she performs in the horse show on the whiffle ball bat she called “Whisper.” She is always the dog in the dog show while the doll sits propped up against a chair watching. 

We were amazed as she interacted with all creatures’ great and small. She would ride her bike full speed to see the new cat at the bus stop. She’d run to the top of the yard to see the dogs being walked down the street. She would stroll through the barn to gently rub the nose of each horse reaching out of its stall. Each spring she would squeal when she would see a small nest tucked in the tree by her bedroom. She would open her window and sit until she saw the Mama bird fly back to its babies. She would lay a caterpillar on a low branch after she spent the day carrying it around in a mason jar. She would tell us that the caterpillar was going to tell its friends she was kind and they would come back to visit. We were never surprised that when she went to that tree, her caterpillar friends were always waiting. 

When we close our eyes, we see Catherine mesmerized by the butterflies. She would stop short when she spied the first butterfly of the season. She would run to get her net and would throw it back and forth as she ran across the yard. When she finally caught a butterfly she would hold it, only for a minute, before gently nudging it to fly away. On warm summer days, we would smile as we watched her crouched in the garden with a huge butterfly on her finger. She had finally figured out how to catch one without a net. She would whisper secrets that would float to the sky on the butterfly’s wings. 

Catherine told us one day she would care for the animals. She made business cards that read “Catherine’s Animal Shelter” and included her self-appointed title: “Care Taker.” We had no idea when we asked you to remember Catherine by donating to The Animal Center, we would be able to make our daughter’s dream a reality. But thanks to the generosity from friends like you, we are pleased to announce that we will be building the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary in partnership with The Animal Center in Newtown.

 The Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary will be a place where all creatures are welcome; a place where all creatures will know that we are kind and they are safe. We know the sanctuary will not happen overnight, but we do know that it will happen – and that Catherine will squeal with delight as we welcome all creatures, great and small, into our place of hope, healing and love.

 From the depths of our souls, we thank you. 

–Jenny and Matt Hubbard

Each year tens of thousands of San Franciscans go running or strolling along San Francisco’s waterfront at beautiful Crissy Field. This westward journey inevitably ends at the chain link fence next to historic Fort Point, just beneath the majestic Golden Gate Bridge.

Each day hundreds of us arrive at this turnaround point, and, before turning back, instinctively touch the metal “Hopper’s Hands” plate on the chainlink fence. Why wouldn’t you? Everyone does… But like yourself, I have wondered, Who Is Hopper?… and why are his hands immortalized at Fort Point? Well, after much internet research, I was moved to finally discover just who Hopper is: 

HOPPER IS A TRUE SAN FRANCISCO HERO. HE IS ONE OF THE MANY GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE’S IRON WORKERS THAT NOT ONLY RISK LIFE AND LIMB EACH DAY MAINTAINING THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL BRIDGE, BUT VOLUNTEER TO

SAVE THE LIVES OF LOST SOULS ATTEMPTING TO END THEIR LIVES BY JUMPING OFF THE BRIDGE. 

Below is the moving text of a San Francisco Chronicle article by Scott Ostler that explains the genesis of the “Hoppers Hands” sign and details the heroic, on-call volunteer suicide prevention work that these iron workers perform, simply because they feel it is the right thing to do: 

SAVING LIVES JUST PART OF THE JOB – Scott Osltler, San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 2001 

“If you’re an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge and your home phone rings at 3 a.m., you know it’s trouble. You know someone is threatening to jump off your bridge. Your stuff is always ready; you’re out the door in minutes. If you aren’t too late, if you climb out onto the cold steel and sweet-talk some poor lost soul off the beam or tower or manage to wrestle him or her to safety, it’s a good feeling. Many suicide attempts are impulsive; lives can be salvaged.

 If you fail, if the person jumps into that bottomless fog, it ruins your day. 

“There’s no describing how helpless you feel,” says Ken Hopper, a Golden Gate Bridge ironworker for 17 years. 

These ironworkers are tough guys. Men of Steel, they’re called. Cowboys in the Sky. They fix and maintain the world’s most amazing Tinkertoy. 

But what qualifies these blue-collar rivet-wrestlers to perform the delicate psychological task of suicide prevention? Just this: There’s nobody else. 

“We’re the only ones dumb enough to do it,” Hopper says. 

They’re the only ones with enough equipment, knowledge of the bridge and courage to go over the rail. 

The suicide rescue duty is voluntary, but the bridge’s ironworkers all take their turns. There’s almost no danger of falling, but it’s not a risk-free gig. One man pulled a knife on an ironworker. A loaded gun fell out of the pocket of another guy. An ironworker was bitten by a woman he pulled off the bridge. 

But the iron cowboys answer the call, late at night or during their shift. At least two of them go out on every rescue. They give it their best shot, and the weird thing is that they wind up being pretty damn good at the psychological stuff. 

Sometimes a police psychologist will be at the scene, coaching the ironworkers by radio. More often, the rescuers are on their own. I asked Hopper if the workers are given any suicide prevention training. 

“Over the years, (suicide prevention experts) have come to give us seminars, ” he says. “They wind up asking us questions, because all they do is talk to these (suicidal people) on the phone. We deal with them face to face.” 

Often a would-be jumper is locked into a private mental zone and the trick is to get his or her attention. Some tricks that have worked: 

“Hey, if you’re going to jump, at least give me your mom’s phone number so I can call her to tell her.”

“That’s a nice watch. If you’re going to jump, can I have it?” 

Sometimes the trick is simple compassion, the voice of a human who cares. Look, I’ve been through some real hard times myself. I know it’s possible to get help. 

Hopper estimates he has talked or wrestled down about 30 people, and lost two. 

Great percentage, but even so, it all caught up with him a few years ago. Hopper underwent a couple years of therapy, had his name removed from the rescue-call list. 

“It wasn’t one incident,” he says, “it was a culmination. I tried to stuff ‘em all in this bag. The bag gets so big, it bursts.” 

Hopper is a bear of a guy with a bushy mustache and a sensitive side. When he noticed that waterfront joggers have a ritual of touching the fence at the dead-end of the sidewalk next to Fort Point, he had the bridge’s sign painter make a sign with two handprints on it, and another sign with two dog paws, because one woman had her dog touch the fence. 

So losses haunt him. Once Ken and two other ironworkers were clinging to one arm of a man hanging over the rail. The man grabbed another piece of bridge with his other arm, wrenched free and swung off another beam and into the world’s most popular suicide pit. 

Another time, Hopper arrived at a rescue just in time to see a man fling his 2-year-old daughter off the bridge, then jump off himself. 

It eats at Hopper when a talked-down suicide is taken into custody and then quickly released with little or no psychiatric observation. Hopper talked an 18-year-old City College student off the bridge, and she was taken away by police. 

The next morning, while a press conference was being held at City Hall to announce a new bridge suicide-prevention program, the teenager walked back onto the bridge and jumped. 

On occasion, the family of a jumper will later seek out the ironworkers involved in the attempted rescue. What happened? What were my son’s last words? 

“You try to help them get some peace of mind,” Hopper says. 

But what about peace of mind for the ironworkers? They almost never get info on what happens to the people they rescue. 

Hopper says that’s a sore spot. No follow-up, no closure. You help save a life, you become involved in that life, you know? 

“Once in a great while,” Hopper says, “one of the guys will get a letter or note from someone they talked down. I’ve known that to happen only two or three times. When a guy gets a letter like that, it’s a treasure; it’s like gold.” 

Mostly, the ironworkers don’t talk or philosophize or complain about this aspect of their job. They don’t talk feelings. They’re tough guys. 

As soon as Hopper completed his therapy, as soon as he felt like he had a handle, he put his name back on the call list for rescues.” 

- “Saving Lives Just Part of the Job”, Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, January 10, 2001