My dear brother, Arthur Anthony Pacheco.
Where to begin… He was born on October 19, 1951, at Queen of Angels Hospital, Los Angeles, California, and weighed 10 pounds at birth, so that kind of started my brother’s life path. Nothing was ever the usual with him.
Early school years, Art was very inquisitive, always asking “why”, to the point that a note was sent home to my parents that he asked too many questions.
As I recall, in later years, he was given a chemistry set and used it to operate on a frog to see what made it tick. The irony was that the frog lived after being tranquilized and opened up and re-stitched back together, to which I nicknamed him “Dr. Frankenstein.”
Oh yes, let me backtrack a little here; when Art was about 5 – 7 years old, he really got into the life and death of Jesus Christ, possibly influenced by the fact that he attended a Catholic school. Anyway, we lived in an apartment building with four apartments in total. A family lived in one of the apartments that had kids close to our age. Art befriended one of the kids, whose name was Richie. Art was so taken by the statues of the Cross and Christ’s crucifixion that he re-created them in our backyard and convinced Richie to be Christ and came very close to actually nailing him to a wooden cross he had acquired. Fortunately, my mother saw what he intended to do, and knowing her son was able to change the course and ultimately save Richie!
That’s what was so intense about my brother. Everything he found interesting captured his complete attention until he was satisfied, “Why”
His teenage years were also very colorful in that he was exposed to the “hippie experience,” of course he embraced it to the max, leaving no stone unturned. (no pun intended)
At one point, he could have been mistaken for John Lennon as he looked just like him. Long hair, round-rimmed glasses, slender physique, and face.
Unfortunately, there was a downside to this area for him, in that he experienced some prison time through some bad choices he made, but the silver linnning to that experience was his life changed forever, and for the good.
I feel so blessed to have shared our lives in so many ways. I was there when he came into the physical world and there when he left.
I know I’ve left a lot of years out, but I’m sure you’ll have many others to fill in the blanks.
Love, Yolie.
Written by Jill Richardson in Heartfelt Memories with Arthur Hakalani on