Editing Ed Ricketts (section)

==Life==
Ricketts was born in Chicago to Abbott Ricketts and Alice Beverly Flanders Ricketts. He had a younger sister Frances and a younger brother Thayer. His sister Frances (Ricketts) Strong said he had a mind like a dictionary and was often in trouble for correcting teachers and other adults.<ref name=Rodger/> Ricketts spent most of his childhood in Chicago, except for a year in South Dakota when he was age 10. 

After a year of college, Ricketts traveled to Texas and New Mexico. In 1917, he was drafted into the Army Medical Corps. He hated the military bureaucracy, but according to [[John Steinbeck]], "was a successful soldier".

After discharge from the army, Ricketts studied [[zoology]] at the University of Chicago. He was influenced by his professor [[W.C. Allee]],<ref name=Rodger/> but dropped out without taking a degree. He then spent several months walking through the American south, from Indiana to Florida. He used material from this trip to publish an article in ''Travel'' magazine titled "Vagabonding Through Dixie". He returned to Chicago and studied some more at the university.<ref name=Rodger/>

In 1922, Ricketts met and married Anna Barbara Makar, daughter of Croatian immigrants- Marija Piskuric (married as Mary Makar) and Miho (Michael) Makar. As a private person, Anna often went by other names of Nancy and Barbara, and Ricketts was known to call her Nan. Anna was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1900. Ricketts and Makar married in Chicago, Illinois in 1922, and one year later, they had a son, Edward F. Ricketts, Jr.<ref>{{cite web |title=Pennsylvania Births and Christenings, 1709-1950 |url=https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:HHP5-5BZM |accessdate=February 15, 2020 |publisher=FamilySearch}}</ref>{{unreliable source|family search|date=January 2024}} and moved to California to set up [[Pacific Biological Laboratories]] with Albert E. Galigher: Galigher was Ricketts' college friend with whom he had run a similar business on a smaller scale. In 1924, Ricketts became sole owner of the lab, and soon two daughters were born: Nancy Jane on November 28, 1924, and Cornelia on April 6, 1928.

Between 1925 and 1927, Ricketts' sister Frances and both his parents moved to California; Frances and their father Abbott worked with Ricketts at the lab. In late 1930 Ricketts met aspiring writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol,<ref name=Rodger/> who had moved to [[Pacific Grove, California|Pacific Grove]] earlier in the year. For more than a year, Carol worked half-time for Ricketts at the lab until 1932 when Ricketts' wife Nan left, taking their two daughters, and Ricketts no longer had enough money to pay Carol's salary. Steinbeck also spent time at the lab, learning marine biology, helping Ricketts preserve specimens and talking about philosophy. Steinbeck lived very near the lab. What kept them together was the discovery that each had an almost boundless curiosity about almost everything, and that their personality meshed so well. Steinbeck had a need to give, and Ricketts a need to receive. Ricketts made listening an art. At one point in Steinbeck's life, he suffered an "overwhelming emotional upset" and went to the lab to stay with Ricketts. Ricketts played music for Steinbeck until he could bear to come back to himself.<ref name=Benson>Benson 1990</ref>

Nan's separation from Ricketts in 1932 was the first of many separations. In 1936, Ricketts and Nan separated for good, and he lived in his lab. On November 25, 1936, a fire spread from the adjacent cannery, destroying the lab. Ricketts lost nearly everything, including an extraordinary amount of correspondence, research notes, manuscripts, and his prized library, which had held everything from invaluable scientific resources to his beloved collection of poetry. However, the manuscript of Ricketts' textbook (with Jack Calvin) ''[[Between Pacific Tides]]'' had been sent to the publisher.<ref name=Rodger/> John Steinbeck would become a silent 50% partner in the lab, after funding its reconstruction costs.
[[File:JohnSteinbeck crop.JPG|thumb|left|[[John Steinbeck|Steinbeck]], late in life]]

In 1940, Ricketts and Steinbeck journeyed to the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California) in a chartered fishing boat to collect invertebrates for the scientific catalog in their book, ''Sea of Cortez''. Also in 1940, Ricketts began a relationship with Eleanor Susan Brownell Anthony "Toni" Solomons Jackson, who became his common-law wife.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060416/news_mz1j16volcan.html|title=Obituary of Toni Volcani|first=Jack|last=Williams|work=The San Diego Union-Tribune|year=2006|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090608022756/http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060416/news_mz1j16volcan.html|archive-date=June 8, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=Stern p.276|url=http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/pdfs/stern_p276.pdf|access-date=March 20, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v28V8rT9MwUC&q=toni+solomons+volcani&pg=PA175
|title=A John Steinbeck encyclopedia|first=Brian E.|last=Railsback|author2=Michael J. Meyer |publisher=Greenwood Publisher Group|year=2006|page=175 | isbn=978-0-313-29669-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://siomail.ucsd.edu/pipermail/sio-log/2006-April/000240.html|title=SIO LOG #16|work=The Scripps Log|publisher=University of California, San Diego|date=May 20, 2006|access-date=March 20, 2009|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://archive.today/20070630144117/http://siomail.ucsd.edu/pipermail/sio-log/2006-April/000240.html|archive-date=June 30, 2007}}</ref> As Steinbeck's secretary, Jackson helped edit ''[[The Log from the Sea of Cortez]]''. Jackson, who had attended the University of California, Los Angeles, was the daughter of Katherine Gray Church<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Az1PAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Margaretta+Josephine+Gray%22&pg=PA64
|title=Gray Genealogy|first=Marcius D|last=Raymond|publisher=Higginson Book Company|year=1887|page=64|isbn=9780832840937}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/genealogicalpers01jord
|quote=james patton newell.
|title=Genealogical and personal history of the Allegheny Valley, Pennsylvania
|page=[https://archive.org/details/genealogicalpers01jord/page/372 372]|first=John Woolf|last=Jordan|publisher=Lewis Historical Pub. Col.|year=1913}}</ref> and [[Theodore Solomons]], an explorer and early member of the [[Sierra Club]], who had discovered and defined the [[John Muir Trail]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Winnett|Morey|2001|loc=front paper}}</ref> Jackson and her young daughter Katherine Adele moved in with Ricketts and lived with him until 1947. In addition to Steinbeck, their circle of friends included the novelist and painter [[Henry Miller]] and the mythologist, writer, and lecturer [[Joseph Campbell]].<ref>[http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/mavericks-on-cannery-row Mavericks on Cannery Row] American Scientist, Book review.</ref>

During World War II, Ricketts again served in the Army, this time as a medical lab technician; he was drafted in October 1942, missing the age cut-off by days. During his service, he kept collecting marine life and compiling data. His son was drafted in 1943.

In 1945, Steinbeck's novel ''[[Cannery Row (novel)|Cannery Row]]'' was published. Ricketts, the model for "Doc" became a celebrity, and tourists and journalists began seeking him out. Steinbeck portrayed "Doc" (and thus, Ricketts) as a many-faceted intellectual who was somewhat outcast from intellectual circles, a party-loving drinking man, in close touch with the working class and with the prostitutes and bums of [[Monterey]]'s [[Cannery Row]]. Steinbeck wrote of "Doc": "He wears a beard and his face is half Christ and half satyr and his face tells the truth."<ref>See Tamm 2004, p. 292; Burkhead 2002, p. 91; Steinbeck 1994 [1945], Chapter V, p. 29</ref>

Ricketts himself read ''Cannery Row'' with exasperation, by all accounts, but ended saying simply that it could not be criticized because it had not been written with malice.<ref>Tamm, Eric Enno. ''Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist Who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell''. Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004. {{ISBN|1-56858-298-6}}</ref> Ricketts was also portrayed as "Doc" in ''[[Sweet Thursday]]'', the sequel to ''Cannery Row''; as "Friend Ed" in ''[[Burning Bright]]''; as "Doc Burton" in ''[[In Dubious Battle]]''; as [[Jim Casy]] in ''[[The Grapes of Wrath]]''; and as "Doctor Winter" in ''[[The Moon Is Down]]''.

In September 1946, Ricketts' daughter Nancy Jane had a son, making Ricketts a grandfather. That same year, the health of his stepdaughter Kay deteriorated due to a brain tumor; she died the following year on October 5, 1947. Kay's mother, Toni left Ricketts shortly after this death.

Just a few weeks later, Ricketts met Alice Campbell, a music and philosophy student half his age. They "married" in early 1948, but the marriage was not valid because Ricketts never had a legal divorce from Nan.

In March 1948 in New York City, Toni Jackson married Dr [[Benjamin Elazari Volcani]],<ref>{{cite book|url=http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=hb1r29n709&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00076&toc.depth=1&toc.id= |title=2000, University of California: In Memoriam |author=University of California (System) Academic Senate|publisher=University of California Regents|year=2000|page=283}}</ref> a renowned microbiologist she had met while he was working with the famous microbiologist [[C. B. van Niel]] (a student of [[Albert Kluyver]]'s) at Stanford University's [[Hopkins Marine Station]] in Monterey in 1943.

In 1948, Ricketts and Steinbeck planned together to go to British Columbia and write the book ''The Outer Shores'' about the marine life north toward Alaska.<ref name=Rodger/> On previous trips Ricketts had done most of the needed research and he gave Steinbeck the typescripts for these as he had done previously with ''The Sea of Cortez''.<ref>Bruce Robison, "Mavericks on Cannery Row," ''American Scientist'', vol. 92, no. 6 (November–December 2004, p. 1: a review of Eric Enno Tamm, [http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/mavericks-on-cannery-row ''Beyond the Outer Shores: The Untold Odyssey of Ed Ricketts, the Pioneering Ecologist who Inspired John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell''], Four Walls Eight Windows, 2004.</ref>

A week before the planned expedition, on May 8, 1948, as Ricketts was driving across the railroad tracks at Drake Avenue, just uphill from Cannery Row, on his way to dinner after his day's work, a [[Del Monte (train)|''Del Monte Express'']] passenger train hit his car.<ref name="Bruce Robison 2004, p. 1">Bruce Robison, "Mavericks on Cannery Row," ''American Scientist'', vol. 92, no. 6 (November–December 2004, p. 1.</ref><ref>[[Marquis Childs]], "A Novel Aquarium Depicts the Story of Monterey Bay," ''Smithsonian'', vol. 16, no. 6 (June 1985), p. 95.</ref> He lived for three days, conscious at least some of the time, before dying on May 11.

A life-size bust of Ricketts, at the site of the long-defunct rail crossing, commemorates the biologist-philosopher who inspired novelist [[John Steinbeck]] and mythologist [[Joseph Campbell]]. Passers-by often pick nearby flowers and place them in the statue's hand. Also at the crossing are derelict crossbucks marking the site of the accident.