Santa Cruz, CA

Terence Matthew Meehan passed away peacefully on February 17. His last days were spent with close family members which, for Terry, included his four-month old granddaughter lying on the bed next to his legs, toddlers, dogs, son, spouse, siblings, nieces, nephews, and friends from every corner of his 74 year life. His room and patio became a destination to share some lemon bars, some tears, a story or two, a few licks on one of his guitars or an a cappella duet.

Terry had a quiet demeanor, yet created profound kinship with abroad spectrum of people and formed lifelong bonds with friends going back to Santa Cruz High.

His smile had no pretense — always spontaneous and without artifice, a genuine, unfiltered reaction to the moment.

He began life inElPaso, Texas, in March of 1950. After many moves, the family settled in Santa Cruz in 1959, with Terry, older sister Diana, and younger brother Tom.

Terry was a creative young soul. A musician, writer, and poet with a penchant for whimsical verse who also excelled in math and science. As ayoung student, his difficulty complying with peremptory classroom rules led him to "sample" more than one Catholic school. He eventually settled at Santa Cruz High, graduating with Class of '68.

In college, first at Cabrillo College, then UC Santa Cruz, Terry was first drawn to creative writing classes, but when a mentor recommended he also enroll in coursework wholly unrelated to writing, he took a botany class and became enchanted with the power of plants, phytochemistry, and later, pharmacology. In spite of and/or because of this trajectory, he excelled academically while still enjoying the intoxicants of the times. Then, in another example of non-compliance, Terry vigorously exited UCSC with one semester remaining, loaded up his Volvo wagon and departed with his girlfriend for parts unknown.

Terry returned to California after gritty jobs in an East Coast steel foundry and a Milton Bradley plant as a union paper cutter, where he joked that he made alot of money —printing $100,000 bills for the Game of Life. Now in his mid 20's, he was accepted into pharmacy school at Idaho State and received his PharmD degree in 1976. The Gem State did not feel like home to Terry sohereturned to Santa Cruz and began work as a pharmacist.

For many years, drugs characterized both his professional and recreational life. Alcohol became a problem.

When he met his future wife Christine at Dominican Hospital, he abandoned the dream of living out his days in aboat in the Santa Cruz Harbor, along with drugs and alcohol. Terry would forever after refer to June 6, 1985, as his "D-Day." A year later, he and Christine were married, and a year after that, their son Michael was born.

Terry and Christine designed and built a house on the westside, went to the Strawberry Music Festival outside of Yosemite for 12 years in a row, visited the same campsite in Big Sur four times ayear, and raised Michael in a household overflowing with music, literature, film, witticisms, contrarianism, and a keen reverence for the unknown.

During this time, Terry was known to cycle up the UCSC bike path nearly every morning before work, to find any baked goods hiding in the house, to fear every spider, to love every dog, to remain dedicated to his siamese cat Owie despite her antagonistic temperament, and to occasionally fall asleep in apith helmet and his small round sunglasses leaning against a rocky outcrop on the beach.

In 2005, Terry was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, separated from Christine, and spent a decade moving between bungalows in the small coastal towns of southern California, before moving back to Santa Cruz.

Despite the plodding advance of Parkinson's, Terry maintained an abiding commitment to his eclectic community of friends. Despite its disabling effects, he remained stubbornly active: boxing, beach volleyball climbing at Pacific Edge, swimming, taiko drumming, doing on-camera pullups for his family during a pandemic Christmas Zoom call, biking down the halls of his assisted living facility to the chagrin of the caretakers. Despite everything, this June would have marked 40 years of sobriety.

Terry is survived by his former wife and forever friend Christine, his sister Diana and brother Tom, his son Michael and daughter-in-law Mikayla, and his two granddaughters Violet and Frankie, who by all accounts have inherited the guileful smile and twinkle in the eye that Terry was known for.

Terry was buried at sea in Monterey Bay on March 1st.

A memorial service for friends &family will be held at 2:30pm at the Seymour Center in Santa Cruz on May 17th. A donation to the Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease would honor Terry greatly.