Note from the Editors: We are saddened to report that longtime MLTF member and GI Rights Hotline counselor Kit Anderton passed away in March. Kit made Santa Cruz his home and was a founding member of the hotline node there, as well as a volunteer with local peace and justice organizations and civic bodies. He wrote several articles for On Watch, including an extensive analysis of the military’s then-new Integrated Disability Evaluation System (IDES) in 2012. He will be missed.
The following obituary was published in the Santa Cruz Sentinel on Apr. 4, 2019:
KIT ANDERTON, AUGUST 17, 1944 – MARCH 30, 2019
Kit Anderton died gracefully just as he wished in his home, supported by his children and close friends. He has lived in Santa Cruz county since 1980 and spent the summers of his childhood riding horses through these hills from his grandparents’ place, Hidden Hill Ranch.
Founding owner of Woodstove and Sun, he was an inspiration and role model to those who worked with him and demonstrated that revolutionary practices such as profit sharing do work. A selfproclaimed introvert, he will be remembered as a community builder who gave of himself where he saw need. He served on the Santa Cruz City School Board as well as the boards of Delta School, Resource Center for Nonviolence, Ecology Action, Cultural Council, KUSP, and the Youth Soccer League.
Kit valued meeting and working with people more than any title and could be found coaching Little League and soccer, serving Thanksgiving dinner at Second Harvest Food Bank, and walking precincts for the Democratic Party. He took great pleasure in consciousness expanding conversation with those in his writing salon, book group, bridge club, drawing and marimba classes. His commitment to peace was at the heart of all he did from being a conscientious objector in the 1960s to his recent work advising GIs of their rights. Kit was an educator and lifelong learner who loved to glean from history how to create a finer future.
He is survived by his children Lilith and Luke, his granddaughter Marley, as well as family and countless friends near and far to whom he was fiercely loyal.
Kit’s life will be celebrated on Hidden Hill Ranch at 2PM on May 25.
