Written by Rocky Saxbe

The Hippie & The Marine is a strange title for a book. What’s a hippie is probably a mystery to anyone born after 1980, and even then, a hippie’s connection with the Marine Corps seems contradictory. Nevertheless, when one hippie (Suzy) met up in San Francisco with one Marine (me) bound for the tropical paradise of South Vietnam, they embarked on a lifelong love affair, making for an interesting story.

This book became an unexpected and lengthy project after Suzy was encouraged by our daughter, Sarah, to write about our family so that our grandkids would know more about us and our times. Although personal memories can be shared by telling stories around the dinner table or when the audience is trapped in the car on a road trip, they can be quickly forgotten or ignored when competing with all the distractions available today. Even when recollections are written down or preserved on a computer, they can be dismissed as vanity tales unworthy of serious consideration. I suppose The Hippie and The Marine is a vanity tale, but it’s worthy of serious consideration, at least by the people it was written for, our friends and family. The stories, musings, and poems describe who we were (and are), who and where we came from, and how growing up in this extraordinary country has defined us. Our great-grandchildren one day may ask, what was it like back then?  If we’re not around to reply, The Hippie & The Marine can be dusted off, and the stories can be told.

I’ve been with Suzy since she was twenty, and she repeatedly surprises me with out-of-the-blue pronouncements that she’s decided to pursue some new challenge. Once, after listening to a Mozart concert, she declared at age forty she would learn to play the piano, and she did. Five years later, after returning from a museum lecture, she announced to the kids and me that she was applying to graduate school. Whether it’s creating art, art consulting, technology, piano, or politics, Suzy’s curiosity, determination, follow-through, and resilience constantly amaze me. But never did I imagine she would write a book, but she has, and here it is!