Jeff Cregg...

I met Lew when I was only 9 or 10 at the house in Strawberry after my Mother & father split up. My mother brought him home with her for me to meet one day. She liked to get my opinion of people. Lew & I took a liking to each other. He moved in with us when we moved to Marin City.

Lew treated me as though I was the son that he never had. We went camping hunting and fishing together.

All I really knew about Lew was, I guess maybe because I was so young at the time,t aht he worked as a longshorman and wrote and read Poetry in San Francisco once in a while. I believe I was 13 when Lew disappeared.

The music scene in San Francisco was blossoming around that time and the bands just to name a few were: The Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, Santana, Jimmy Hendrix, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby Stills & Nash, Otis Redding, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

Lew was instrumental in hold one of the first concerts in the city before Bill Graham started The Fillmore Auditorium and Winterland and Chet Helms was forming The Family Dog at The Avalon Ballroom.

The first band I ever played in when I was only eleven called God, Mother & Country was mentioned in a book about the era called the Bands of The Sixties was named by Lew.

I guess what I'm trying to say about Lew with all these stories is that he was a very entertaining and likeable guy that was fun to be around and he got my attention from the very first htime I layed eyes on him.

I still and probably always will have fond memories of Lew and the time we got together with he was here and will remember him as a person with a friendly personality, a good sense of humor and as a man that cared a whole lot about his fellow human beings.