. . . while watching the evening news, I suddenly heard the name of an online friend. There had been a shooting in Redding, California, 200 miles (322 km) from our home. My wife and I were shocked as the story unfolded about the religion-inspired hate crime linked to the bombing of a local synagogue. To the surprise of my wife, I explained that I had an email relationship with one of the victims – Gary Matson – who was a well-known member of the Medit-Plants email forum.
Gary and I had just a day before exchanged some emails on topics of our shared interests – plants, botany, education, teaching. I was inspired by his projects in this northern corner of our giant Central Valley, at one of the extremities of our Californian mediterranean climate region. We shared similar ideas and encouraged each other. I could not believe that he was now gone, and under such troubling circumstances.
Gary, and his partner, Winfield Mowder, knew their killers well, even helping them set up a stand at the local farmer’s market. The Redding community was shocked at the loss of these two visionary men whose contribution to the community is still felt today. They also were given pause by how successfully their killers had concealed their inner feeling of hate.
For at least a decade, while searching through my copious emails in search of something in particular, I would stumble upon my many rich exchanges with Gary. Rereading their content, I was often re-inspired in my own efforts, in my own life. While I culled old emails that were no longer needed (we were concerned about space usage in those days), I always made sure to keep those from Gary. When the email system I was using ultimately was replaced by something newer, I made efforts to archive my old emails – unfortunately, and sadly, they were ultimately lost.
Some of you may recall Gary and his contributions to the Medit-Plants group in the late 1990s. I searched for ‘Gary Matson’ in the online archive of this forum – hort.net – you can do the same if you wish: https://www.hort.net/lists/medit-plants/search.pl (be sure and check ‘Search all years’). This archive unfortunately does not (yet) contain all the posts from the group’s inception a few years prior to 1997.
For more information about this very sad event, and Gary and Winfield’s life and contributions, see the following links.
https://web.archive.org/web/20000229034244/http://www.garysgarden.com/GaryMarcia.htm (a short write-up from gary’s ex-wife, Marcia Howe, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s ‘Way-Back Machine’)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Gary_Matson_and_Winfield_Mowder
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Representative-Murder-of-Gary-Matson-and-Winfield-Mowder_tbl5_276597228
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/21/us/national-news-briefs-2-brothers-arraigned-in-gay-killing.html
Seán A O'Hara 