2 Summer 2019 Applegater
timber products, and sustainable
forest management.
Chris was predeceased by his parents,
George and Wiltrud Bratt, and brothers
Jonathan, George, Tom, and Peter. He is
survived by Joan Peterson, his wife and
partner since they met at Tomales High
School some 50 years ago, and by his first
wife, Nancy Wilkins, the mother of his
three children.
Survivors also include his children
Toni Winter (Terry), Josh Bratt (Wendie),
and Nick Bratt (Beth); stepchildren
Gordon Smith (Malie) and Jenell
Smith; sister Susanna; cousins Michael
and Mandy; countless nieces and
nephews, including Greg, Nadya, Peter,
James, Kevin, Georgia, Karen, and Alexis;
and many grandchildren, grandnieces,
grandnephews, and great-grandchildren
as near as California and as far away
as Norway.
When I’m on my journey, don’t you weep
after me...
I don’t want you to weep after me.”
OBITUARY
Charles Christopher Bratt
December 11, 1930 - April 8, 2019
BY LARRY FRANCIS
Folk singer, carpenter, activist, writer,
poet, teacher, folk artist and collector, red
diaper baby, family man, woodsman,
builder, volunteer, investor, philanthropist,
environmentalist, humanist
Christopher Bratt (“Chris,” “Papa
Chrissy”) was born at home on December
11, 1930, to Wiltrud Hildner Bratt and
George Cleveland Bratt at the Columbus
Apartments, 1492 Pacific Avenue, San
Francisco. Chris passed away at his home
in Applegate on April 8, 2019, surrounded
by family and friends.
Through all the tumult and the strife, I
hear that music ringing.
It sounds an echo in my soul; how can I
keep from singing!
—“When I’m on My Journey,” as sung by the
Weavers
Larry Francis
larrydotfrancis@gmail.com
—An old Quaker hymn, as adapted and sung
by Pete Seeger
Chris loved to sing, knew hundreds if
not thousands of songs, and sang them
in his impassioned, clear tenor—in living
rooms and kitchens, on picket lines
and stages, at potlucks—wherever and
whenever the spirit moved him. He sang
lead for a semiprofessional folk group, the
Albion Trio, which played around the San
Francisco Bay Area in the early ’60s. Chris
had wide-ranging, eclectic tastes in music
and was influenced by Pete Seeger and the
Weavers as well as international folk dance
(Chris loved all line dancing, especially the
Kopachka Folk Dancers of Mill Valley),
Puccini (especially La Bohème), Miriam
Makeba, and Paul Robeson. He picked
up songs and sang them his whole life
long—everything and anything from
YMCA camp songs to Ezio Pinza, Tom
Paxton, and Woody Guthrie. It’s only right
to punctuate this story with lines from
some of his favorites.
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the
morning,
I’d hammer in the evening, all over this
land...
—“If I Had a Hammer,” by Pete Seeger and
Lee Hays
Chris had a hammer and knew how
to use it. His dad was a carpenter, and
Chris helped him on odd jobs during the
Depression. During World War II, Chris
went to work in a boatyard. Later, while
a member of the carpenters union, Chris
helped build the tract homes in South
San Francisco that Malvina Reynolds
immortalized in her song “Little Boxes.”
Later he became a general contractor,
founding Little Gem Construction (“a
jewel of a job”) with partners Molly
Malouf and Jim Holland. In the early
1960s, when the Ku Klux Klan was
burning churches in Mississippi, Chris
and Molly went there with the American
Friends Service Committee to help
congregations rebuild. In the late ’60s,
Chris and his partners in Little Gem
went to Delano, California, to build
the Rodrigo Terrónez Memorial Clinic
for the United Farm Workers (UFW).
Chris’s politics and music were strongly
influenced by the United Brotherhood of
Carpenters, UFW, Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee, American
Friends Service Committee, and the Peace
and Freedom Party.
Back in the Bay Area in the early
’70s, the Little Gem partners got tired of
building ever fancier homes. A remodel
calling for a fifth bathroom was the last
straw; Little Gem dissolved. Chris got his
teaching credential from San Francisco
State University and started teaching
Tributes to Chris
from friends
and associates
woodshop at Tomales High School in
Tomales, California, where he met Joan
Peterson, who was teaching English there.
In 1976 Chris and Joan moved their
blended family to 160 acres on Thompson
Creek Road in Applegate.
All must work, for work is good,
and in work man finds brotherhood.
—“Hey Zhankoye,” Jewish folksong as sung by
the Weavers
In Oregon, more carpentry jobs
beckoned—large and small, volunteer and
not—including countless hours building
stages and a portable burrito booth and a
remodel of the Headwaters Building on
4th Street in Ashland. Chris was a tireless
builder, figuratively and literally. He
built forts and the famous and dangerous
“rocking boat” for his kids, homes and
remodels for family and friends, tract
homes like the “Little Boxes,” jungle gyms,
and innumerable smaller projects.
Chris knew that working together
on a project builds community. In the
1980s, putting his boundless energy,
teaching experience, and carpentry skills
to work, Chris organized a carpentry and
woodworking co-op, the Billy Mountain
Builders, which evolved over the years
into Cottage Green Construction, a
contracting partnership he formed with
Richard Goodnough. Even through the
last year of his life, Chris was in charge
of maintaining, improving, and repairing
Bratt Family Trust properties in San
Francisco and Grass Valley, California.
Chris’s passion for work was the prime
ingredient in bringing people together,
along with his rough and wry sense of
humor, exemplified by a favorite phrase
of his, “What do you think this is—a
country club?”
On their property in the Applegate,
Chris and Joan had a big garden, pasture
for goats and horses, and sustainable
forestry for timber and firewood. The
picture of Chris in their big garden brings
to mind another piece of a favorite song
that Chris and Joan often sang:
Going to Oregon, where everything is
green,
Gonna have the best ol’ farm that you
have ever seen.”
—“Times A Gettin’ Hard,” by Lee Hays as sung
by the Weavers and amended from “California” to
“Oregon” by Chris and Joan
When Chris, Joan, and their children
moved to their place on Thompson Creek
(“Forest Farm,” they called it), they also
brought Chris’s parents, George and
Wiltrud (Beb). One night at dinnertime,
a young woman they didn’t know came to
the door and told them that the Bureau of
Land Management was planning to spray
large areas of the forest abutting their
property. Beb overheard the conversation
and said, “Christopher, you should do
something about it.” He did do something
about it—and with a passion one Boise
Cascade vice president described as
“relentless pressure, relentlessly applied.”
Besides organizing the Homestead
Valley Improvement Club back in
his Mill Valley days, in Oregon Chris
helped found and/or served on boards
of numerous organizations, among them
ACOTS (Applegate Citizens Opposed
to Toxic Sprays), Northwest Coalition
for Alternatives to Pesticides, TREE
(Thompson Creek Residents for Ecological
Education), Headwaters/Geos Institute,
Applegate Partnership and Watershed
Council, Applegater newsmagazine, and
Applegate Neighborhood Network.
In the office he built onto the
main house, Chris kept extensive files
on forest management, herbicide- and
pesticide-spraying, clear-cutting, small
woodlands management, small-diameter
Diana Coogle
Loss
When Chris Bratt died
Applegate forests lost
a staunch defender.
Applegate gatherings lost
a fine folk musician.
The Applegater lost
a huge supporter
and the board
its longest-serving member
and “Behind the Green Door” columnist.
The Grayback Salon lost
a reader whose unique perspective
connected the poems with carpentry
(his lifelong craft)
and raised memories of a
San Francisco childhood
with socialist-minded parents.
Joan lost
a wonderful husband.
And I lost
a friend I loved.
z
Richard Goodnough
From the moment I heard of the
passing of Chris Bratt, a song he loved
came to mind: “When I am gone,” by
Phil Ochs. This song contains phrases like
I won’t know the right from the wrong and
you won’t find me singin’ on this song when
I am gone, so I guess I’ll have to do it while
I’m here. Chris had a very strong sense of
right and wrong and loved to sing about
workers’ rights, other cultures, harmony in
the world, and many kinds of love.
Won’t be asked do my share when I’m
gone, so I guess I’ll have to do it while I’m
here. Doing his share was what he tried
doing every day, whether in his work, with
his family, or in his community.
Can’t be singing louder than the guns
when I’m gone, so I guess I’ll have to do it
while I’m here. Peace on a national level
or a community level was something that
was very close to his heart. His bumper
stickers read, “I am already against
the next war” and “Think globally, act
locally.” During the time of the civil rights
movement, he left paying work at home
and went to Mississippi to help rebuild a
burnt-out church.
See CHRIS BRATT TRIBUTES, page 17.