Oliver Haskard left us in this world on October 10, 2014, due to natural causes near his summer home in Somonauk, Illinois. Oliver was born May 24, 1919, in Lancashire, England. He was educated at Eton College and Cambridge University. During World War II he served in France, Belgium and Germany with the Royal Horse Guards ("The Blues"), and latterly became a captain and intelligence officer. Among his war experiences, he saw service liberating concentration camps.
The war turned Oliver into a lifelong active pacifist. He rejected a career in the Foreign Service and turned to dairy farming, feeding his cattle on potatoes by necessity in post-war England. He expanded his agricultural career into gardening and landscape design, following Voltaire's conclusion in Candide that we must grow our gardens. Oliver grew gardens in England and then emigrated with his American wife, Tanya-Grace, and created gardens at their disparate homes in Warren, Vermont, Long Boat Key, Florida, Somonauk, Illinois, and Green Valley, Arizona.
In Vermont from 1977 to 1986 they provided the Mad River Valley with literature, art and music from The Tempest Book Shop, staying on in the family business until 1994. Oliver created soil out of seeming refuse on the rocks under the maple trees of West Hill Road in Warren, and in the Arizona desert. Ever a poet, he created his versions of Greek myths, Orpheus, Helen, Penelope and others, retelling those tales in iambic pentameter from a female perspective, and usually with a strong anti-war perspective. His poetry was sparingly published but loved by family and friends. He regularly publicly protested against war.
Oliver leaves behind in this earthly garden his wife of 42 years, Tanya Grace; his son, Professor Dorian O. Haskard, MD, and his wife Kathleen of London; and his daughter, Victoria Philipson and her husband Robert Jones of London; as well as his five stepchildren and spouses, Rick and Holliday Rayfield, Scott and Pattie Rayfield, Marjorie Rayfield, Ford and Diane Rayfield and Tarquin and Cindy Rayfield. Oliver also lives on in 15 grandchildren who miss his earthy and literary and peace-seeking wisdom.
No funeral services are planned.
(From Tanya Grace Haskard, Rick Rayfield and Dorian Haskard.)
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