A Life Remembered
Prolific how-to author left sweet, vibrant legacy
Pop's self-portrait from their honeymoon cruise on the Queen of Bermuda.
The Arizona Republic May 26, 2002 It wasn't much of a request, just a
brief mention to her father that she'd love to have a spice
shelf in her kitchen. But Harry Zarchy took his daughter's
words to heart and went right home and began cutting on a
piece of wood. And then a most unusual thing happened to the
man who was known far and wide as one of the handiest men
around. "He cut his thumb off to the
knuckle," Sue Godwin said, thinking back 25
years. The injury was just a minor setback
for Zarchy, who by the mid-1970s was a prolific author,
having penned dozens of how-to craft books like his first in
1941, Let's Make Something, following it up a few years with
Let's Make More Things and Let's Make a Lot of Things.
Simple titles with a hint of humor,
said his wife, Jeanette. His books dot their Scottsdale home
and are part of his legacy. Zarchy died April 22, two months
after a massive stroke. He was six days short of turning
90. Although he had carved out a
successful career as a fine arts teacher in the New York
City school system, Zarchy found great success when he
decided to put his creative ideas on paper. Jeanette pulled one of the books off
the shelf and lovingly turned the pages. "My, I had
forgotten some of these things," she said, sighing. She
rattled off some suggestions he gave, like making a leather
bookmark, clay mask or a bracelet out of small
coins. Zarchy wrote his first book on a
lark. He had always been interested in how things work. Give
him a set of tools, give him just one tool, and he'd have
something pried open in no time.
Self-portrait of the artist as a young man
When the first book sold well,
publisher A.A. Knopf wanted more. Lots more. And so did
other publishers. By the time his last book was
published in 1973, Zarchy had produced such titles as Let's
Go Camping; Let's Go Boating; Let's Fish; Butterflies and
Moths; Building With Electronics: Transistor and Vacuum Tube
Projects; Weaving; A Family Activity Book; What Does A
Scientist Do? and The Betty Crocker Modern Woman's Fix It
Yourself Handbook of Home Repair. Zarchy was born in New York City,
the eldest of three children to Russian-Jewish immigrants
Louis and Anna Berson Zarchy. After getting his
undergraduate and graduate degrees, he taught fine arts,
painting, photography and stagecraft for 36 years in New
York. During his lifetime, his family
said, he became an expert musician, watchmaker, clock maker,
ham radio operator, photographer, furniture builder and avid
gardener. If he became the slightest bit curious about
something, he'd bury himself in books to master the hobby.
His son, Bill, remembered one year
when an encyclopedia company hired his father to write an
article about archery. It wasn't long before Zarchy's
painstaking research had him making bows out of multiple
layers of wood, arrows from dowels, feathers and points.
And, with the heart of a scientist, Zarchy took to his
backyard to put his skills and creation to the
test. One of Godwin's fondest memories was
of her father, hard at work, sometimes until 2 or 3 in the
morning. He'd be pounding at the typewriter, smoke curling
from his pipe, intensely focused on finishing a book in time
for publication. "You'd see the results the next day
of all his hard work, mounds of paper all balled up on the
floor," she said. "He often said that if he had had a
computer years ago, he could have written twice as many
books."
The Arizona years
If Zarchy had any flaws, it was that
he was something of a music snob, his children said.
"My brother and I used to get into
quasi-battles over music because my dad had perfect pitch
and he only liked 'good' music like classical and we grew up
in the rock and roll era," Godwin said. "My dad thought it
was just garbage." Bill, whom Zarchy was fond of
calling "Will-yam," said it was a sore spot between the
generations. But both said they grew up knowing
how much their father loved them and never hesitated to say
how proud he was of their careers. Godwin became a junior
high school counselor; Bill is a cameraman and owns a
photography company in California. "Growing up the son of a renaissance
man isn't easy," Bill said. "Occasionally, he was gruff with
me if I didn't live up to his expectations or his standards
or his amazing energy level." Zarchy had hoped his son would
someday get to shoot a movie. While that hasn't happened
yet, Bill had recently told his father he shot an episode of
the television show The West Wing. Zarchy died just before
it aired. "He was a sweet, gentle, vibrant,
brilliant man, a great man," Bill said. "He left me with the
feeling that you can do a lot of different things in this
world, that there are a tremendous number of rewarding
things. Boredom was not on his radar screen." Survivors include his wife,
Jeanette; brother, Rubin (Zeke); daughter, Susan Godwin;
son, Bill; grandchildren Julie Thurston, Lisa Troutman, Pam
Benhaim and Rebecca and Daniel Zarchy; and five
great-grandchildren.
This picture of Mom is also from their honeymoon. It wasn't in the paper, but it's hard to resist.
Read Eulogies for Harry Zarchy
See Norm Godwin's Pictorial Tribute to Pop
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