Crispin Hollings
August 28, 1961 - November 10, 2022
Thursday, Nov. 10, in the afternoon, Crispin departed suddenly this world. His loving husband, Luis Casillas, is left behind. Son and brother Crispin also left behind his wonderfully close family (so many reunions!): his mother Jennifer, sisters Charlotte and Jean, brother Paul, four nephews and a niece, all on the east coast; also his godsister Jocelyn Holland in England. Friend Crispin left behind another family of much larger size, close and very close friends on both coasts and across the Atlantic Ocean who will fiercely remember him and try to console each other now that he’s gone. Yet, beyond those two families, he also embraced any portion of the LGBT+ community he encountered in his life, beginning in high school and ending in his Castro neighborhood. His ‘official’ activism (he had started a lesbian/gay group when at UVA) began in Hartford, CT, and continued nonstop after his move to San Francisco in the early 1990s and up till the day of his death.
Crispin firmly believed that a private life as an openly gay man was necessary but not sufficient; he felt a responsibility to establish a public presence as well, to be in the streets or in community organizing rooms anytime his community was being threatened or abused. At the center of his sexual politics was a solid commitment to the word “sex” in that phrase, both in theory and in practice. When he could carve a sliver of time from his full-time job and night classes in UC Berkeley’s MBA program, he joined in the monthly discussions of the SF Sex Politics group (not far away; in his living room in fact) organized by his partner, the late Eric Rofes.
For many years Crispin served the city of San Francisco as a civil servant, first with the Water Dept. of the PUC (the engineer in him loved being called in to address a problem at one or the other of the city’s sanitation plants), then as CFO in the Sheriff’s Dept.–at his desk throughout the pandemic–till his death. But airplanes were always on his mind and in his heart. He loved being aloft in the sky and diving deep into a plane’s engine. After his degree in mechanical engineering (along with one in French) at the University of Virginia gave him a theoretical base in aeronautics and propelled him into his first job at Pratt Whitney in Hartford, he hopped across the Atlantic to take a job next at Airbus outside Toulouse–where his French came in handy. Crispin moved west in the early 90s to take a job at United Airlines in its engine shop at SFO. After being promoted to a supervisory role, he didn’t want to ‘rule’ exclusively from above the hundred or so mostly men and a few women he led, so he enrolled in CCSF’s twoyear program in airplane maintenance. He wanted to get his hands greasy too, to understand from the bottom up the nuts and bolts that his team was charged with keeping in perfect working order. Besides boarding planes for vacations, Crispin’s wanderlust was fed on the job too; he sometimes flew to London or Tokyo to oversee repairs on a United plane, flying home the same day.
The yellow cottage behind Walgreens at 18th & Castro that Crispin shared first with Eric, then with Matt, and for the past ten years with Luis, will feel empty for some time: Crispin’s basso profundo won’t be bouncing off its walls. But for those fortunate enough to have shared their lives with him on visits to the cozy cottage, or at table for the many Thanksgiving Day potlucks, his energizing, effusively friendly spirit will survive even sudden death. May that spirit comfort forever all who knew Crispin–and most especially may it sustain his husband Luis, all day and all night, in the yellow cottage.