George E Sims MD

Artist, architect, and teller of ribald tales, Igor Sazevich died on August 13 at age 93. Surrounded by his beloveds, he took his last breaths in the beautiful house he crafted from the hearts of blackened trees— those that stood as the remaining memorials to the ancient forest that burned around his first home on the Inverness ridge in 1995. He was born in San Francisco in 1929 to Zenaida and Zygmund Sazevich, both refugees from the Russian Revolution—she from Odesa, he from Kazan—who made long and fraught journeys across the globe to settle eventually in San Francisco, CA. They met at the California School of Fine Arts, where Zygmund would go on to teach sculpture, and worked together for Miss Isabella Worn, creating elaborate sets and decor for opulent galas and balls across the Bay Area.

In his earliest years, Igor was raised between Paris and San Francisco, but the rumblings of war in Europe sent the family back to San Francisco permanently. It was a fertile time for the arts in the city. Zygmund, who was receiving numerous commissions for work, was part of the 1940 Art in Action exhibit at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island, carving alongside his former teacher, Ralph Stackpole, and many others. Igor loved taking the streetcar from his home in the Richmond District down to the docks to cross the Bay and watch his father work.

Igor’s own restless creativity soon began to make itself apparent. He threw himself into theater at Roosevelt Junior High and drew cartoons for the school paper. After graduating from Washington High School, he enrolled at UC Berkeley. Igor found a fitting home at the School of Architecture where the students, who would become lifelong friends, gathered by day in the coffeehouses and spent wine-soaked nights together at an apartment they shared called The Shack.

Igor’s studies came to a sudden halt when he was drafted in 1953 into America’s peacekeeping forces in Europe. Not one to fall in line, he managed to finagle his way into serving as the captain for the ThirtySeventh Army Engineer Group’s tennis team in Germany. He picked up a 1953 MG two-door roadster while in Europe and zipped around the continent with his friend Andy when they were on leave.

After returning (with the MG), Igor finished his studies and got his first job at the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He soon left, and began to pick up his own clients, later starting his own practice focused on residential and restaurant design, hiring on a talented and bohemian crew who became much loved friends. A morning did not go by without the entire office heading out to the local cafe, all cherishing the camaraderie and the espresso.

Igor met a young woman named Natasha Dakerserhof who dazzled him as she strummed a guitar and sang Russian folk songs. Her family dazzled him too—a charismatic group of Golitzens and Romanovs, nobility who had also fled the Revolution. They were married in 1957 at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in San Francisco.

Two daughters arrived in the 1960s just as Igor and Natasha were letting their hair grow long and heading to shows at the Fillmore. They purchased land in Inverness, CA, built a weekend home there, and fell into the embrace of West Marin’s hippie community that danced under the trees as the Youngbloods played and ran naked into the waves.

In 1978, Tyson Underwood, the newly appointed director of the Sausalito Art Festival, tapped Igor and Natasha to serve as chief architects, bringing them on to a dynamic team that would revitalize the festival. A stunning design was developed that recycled the material from Christo’s 1976 Running Fence, making the festival grounds as distinctive as the artwork on view.

As Igor grew his architectural business, eventually designing restaurants for the Nordstrom family across the country, he began to paint more and more, creating murals for restaurant interiors and covering canvases back in his studio on the ridge. Igor’s painting practice grew in importance as he entered the next chapter of his life, abruptly precipitated by the fire that took the Inverness house and Natasha’s death in 2000 just after they had rebuilt and moved themselves there full time from their home in Sausalito.

Igor found a new companion, an accomplished photographer named Marna Clarke, and together the two deepened their art practices, becoming members of Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes, CA and exhibiting there regularly. They shared 20 years together, growing close to new friends around Tomales Bay. Igor cherished his morning coffee at Toby’s Feed Barn—sitting, sketching, and saying hello to chums.

He is survived by his daughters, Nina and Katia, and his partner, Marna.

Dr George E Sims, MD was born on April 14, 1934 in Brno, Czechoslovakia. “Little Jiri” spent most of his childhood in Moravia, he served as an altar boy at the Basilica of the Assumption of Our Lady in Brno, and enjoyed time with his father camping, skiing, and playing ice hockey. After surviving the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, including his mother’s survival from her time in Terezin and Auschwitz concentration camps, they fled Czechoslovakia in 1948 upon seeing the communist occupation taking place. After working their way across refugee camps in central Europe and Germany, they were provided UN refugee status and safe transit to New York in 1952. Crossing the North Atlantic in a rolling army transport is what Dr. Sims attributed to the development of his “sea legs” and first love of the sea.

Upon arriving in New York City, Dr. Sims finished high school in upper Manhattan, attended Fordham University for his undergraduate education, and Albany Medical College.

He originally began his studies in pursuit of a career as a licensed pharmacist, which he completed and also graduated with a specialty in orthopedic surgery in 1961. He took great pleasure in the patients he saw via fellowships and education, especially at the Newington Crippled Children’s Hospital and Yale University. He was subsequently selected for residency at Stanford University, was a surgeon in the US Air Force Reserves, and also completed a successful career in private practice for over 30 years in Sacramento, CA, while attending at Methodist Hospital, Mercy General Hospital and Sutter Health. He also taught and supported surgical services at UC Davis School of Medicine. Dr. Sims later took on the role of Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at the Palo Alto VA Hospital and was member of the Stanford

Medical School faculty and coordinated opportunities for surgeons from Charles University in the Czech Republic to work alongside and learn from their counterparts at Stanford/ Palo Alto VA.

Dr. Sims, a former refugee himself, enjoyed assisting those in need, traveling three times in the 1980s to Afghanistan/Pakistan and its refugee camps as part of the US medical aid to the mujahideen during the Soviet invasion. In addition to his medical practice, he established and operated a thoroughbred breeding farm, numerous orchards, and enjoyed sailing on the San Francisco Bay. Additionally, he was an avid reader, gardener, and world traveler, was fluent in Czech, German, and English, loved everything from the “old world,” especially the Czech food his mother Gerty used to make.

Dr. Sims was preceded in death by his parents, his daughter Kristine, and is survived by his three sons George II, John, and Jordon, their spouses, and numerous grandchildren.

The viewing will take place on Monday August 29th, between 1-5 pm at Driscoll’s Valencia Street Serra Mortuary in San Francisco, the funeral service will be held on Tuesday August 30th, 2022 at 9:00 am at the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery chapel, 1500 Mission Road, Colma, CA 94014.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made at oldfriendsequine.org, a permanent home for retired thoroughbred horses.