Michael Douglas Perry lived 72 years according to a deeply personal credo – that if everyone pursued their dreams and pleasures with full self-awareness and no harm to others, the world would be a more beautiful place. 

For nearly 35 years Michael and Jamie Perry have been soul mates and partners in J.S. Perry Originals, self-described as a Mom-Pop-and-Cat art publishing business.  Jamie is the creative artist, and Michael the business adviser, mechanic, coach, accountant, critic, and gourmet chef.  It was Mike who piloted cross-country road trips, who dollied boxes of stock, set up and took down displays at countless arts and craft fairs and cat shows.  He chatted up the clientele, fluently discussing the fine art of colored pencil drawing - and cats - as he closed sales, and made unforgettable impressions on customers and friends across America. 

Mike was born 1941 in Pensacola, FL.  His parents were small town kids from Missouri, out to see the world courtesy of the U.S. Navy.  His father was an aviation machinist mate when he was tapped to service Amelia Earhart’s plane on the last leg of her round-the-world flight that ended in mystery and tragedy over the South Pacific.  In 1941 his father Kenneth (“Huck”) Perry was stationed in Pensacola earning his wings as a Navy aviator. 

Four years later, Lt. Perry was killed in a crash while test piloting a FD-1G Corsair fighter plane out of North Island Naval Air Station (home to “Top Gun” pilots) near San Diego.   Mike was 5 years old.  The trauma left a wound on the boy that never completely healed.  When Mike began school he moved several times each year due to the unsettled family situation.  Those early years also bonded Mike to his mother, a tie that remained strong right up until her death at age 94 in August 2012.    

Michael’s mother remarried Virgil Van Natta, another Missourian transplanted to California.  They moved to San Mateo, CA, just as post-war suburbia in America was taking off.  In 1959 Mike was in the first graduating class of Hillsdale High School on the San Francisco Peninsula.  He was a competitive swimmer but otherwise avoided organized athletics.  He spent many summers with his younger brothers enjoying Huck Finn adventures on farms and orchards of his grandparents in Maysville, MO.    

Back in California, the 1950s and 60s made an indelible mark on Michael.  School was choked with rules and expectations that Michael stoutly resisted. In the 50s he was the classic teenage rebel: his passions were hot rods cars, Rhythm and Blues—early rock ‘n roll – and, of course, girls.  He once trekked to an R&B concert in Oakland – usually off limits for suburban kids – for a rock concert.  Mike and his buddies found themselves the only white kids in a huge Oakland auditorium.  When a down-ticket group of white kids from Texas came on stage the San Mateo boys identified with them.  Mike had seen one of the first public performances of Buddy Holly and the Crickets.

Mike’s working class home encouraged honest work.  In junior high and high school he held down multiple newspaper routes, mowed lawns, did odd jobs, washed dishes, sold vacuum cleaners door- to-door, pumped gas, ran deliveries for Reed’s pharmacy and later joined the sheet metal worker’s union. 

By the 1960s, Michael felt the pull of cultural changes and enrolled at San Mateo Junior College and later San Francisco State.  As a psychology major he believed understanding mind, motivation and human relationship could change the world for the better.  He was present at SF State during the 1968-69-student strike, a major news event at the time that added a chapter in the radical history of the United States and the Bay Area.  Michael drew deeply upon the counter cultural ethos of that time and place.

With a bachelor’s degree from SF State he gravitated to the Esalen Institute on the Big Sur coast and became part of the early spirit of that community embracing the teachings of Fritz Perls, a German-born psychiatrist and founder of Gestalt Therapy who famously proclaimed: “I do my thing and you do your thing.  I am not in this world to live up to your expectations.”

From this experience to the rest of his life Michael sought to distance himself from the restraints and limitations of workaday life.  He pursued his own vision of a good life defined by free choice, enjoyment of fine food, wine, and the love of others freely given and enthusiastically received. 

After earning his master's degree (also from SF State), Michael became a licensed California Family, Marriage, and Child Counselor.  In 1979 he was working with the developmentally disbled population as an Intake Coordinator at the Kern Regional Center in Bakersfield.  He shared notes on one particular client with a Day Treatment Program Director at Kernview Mental Heath Center.  Her name was Jamie Schaffran.  As the two discussed treatment plans for this dually-diagnosed patient, the pair developed a friendship beyond their jobs.  Mike spoke often of his beloved Siamese cat “The Kid.” Jamie declared herself a dog person.  Mike won her over by suggesting that Jamie come to his place and get to know his cat (great line!). 

By 1982 they left their agency positions and sought a more open experience pursuing art, love and life with two cats while living on the road in a motorhome.  Three years later, the art business allowed them to put down roots with a rented house in California’s Valley of the Moon.  As both of them characterized it, their place in Glen Ellen was a means of “seeking shelter from the storm.”

For all the years since, Michael and Jamie created a life based on love and giving to others while avoiding the limits imposed by conventional society.  While never easy, their life has been a blessing chosen by them, and a gift to multitudes fortunate to have crossed their path.

Family survivors, in addition to Jamie and their cats, includes brothers Daniel Perry of McLean, VA, and Robert Van Natta of Belmont, CA.  Michael is further survived by his niece Colleen Ann Browne of Arlington, VA; two nephews Matthew Perry of San Francisco and Scott Van Natta of Truckee, CA, and by a grandniece and two grandnephews: Abigail Lee Perry, Jack “Huck” Browne and David Daniel Browne. 

My brother’s ultimate judgment on his relationship with this world might be best summed by psychiatrist Richard Alpert – the consciousness pioneer Ram Dass – who said:

 “The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back."

                                                               - written by Dan Perry, Michael's Brother

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