Guy Mannheimer

1943-1989

Guy Mannheimer was Toby Johnson's first lover. They met at a Gay/Straight Men's Gathering in San Francisco in Spring 1972 co-sponsored by Gay-Rap.

Guy was living in Menlo Park, CA at that time. He and about 6 other people, gay and straight, were living in a house--called Werder House (2100 Santa Cruz Ave.)--that had previously been the home of members of The Grateful Dead. Toby used to hitchhike down the Pennisula to see Guy.

That next summer Toby was on staff at the Mann Ranch Seminars (see The Joseph Campbell Connection). About halfway through the summer, Guy joined him, and then remained on staff for the next three years. (Also on staff in those days was a wonderful woman named Marty Kent Jones.)

Mann Ranch Staff 1973 (?)
Guy on the left, then Toby, then Geri Olson, below Nina ?
(The long haired blond woman is Janice McHugh, a Canadian "undocumented alien"
living as a "hippie-chick" in San Francisco, who'd come to live in Toby's household on Arguello Street)

In 1973, partly because their friend Peter Goldblum was teaching in the training program--and partly because Toby had met Terry Carlson who was then working as a Psych Tech at Mt Zion Hospital Crisis Clinic and convinced him that was a good job--Toby and Guy moved to Napa and trained to become Licensed Psychiatric Technicians at Napa State Hospital.

In 1975 they returned to San Francisco, living in an apartment on 18th Street, between Noe and Sanchez, just down the block from the center of the Castro District. Toby got a job--as hoped for--at Mt Zion. Guy had found psychiatric nursing to be uncomfortable, and declined to follow that vocation track. During that time Guy discovered BAGL, Bay Area Gay Liberation, and then got Toby interested also. It was that involvement that indirectly led to Toby's work at the Tenderloin Clinic and the D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance (perhaps the most important thing Toby Johnson actually ever did to affect the course of gay history).

After about six months, Toby and Guy parted amicably, though not without pain. They remained friends.

In the late 70s, Guy became partners with Dan Hampshire. They lived together until Guy's death from AIDS in 1989.

Guy was a second generation Holocaust survivor. He'd been born in a displaced persons camp in Switzerland. His father, an attorney, had returned to Germany to help other Jews get out of the country; he was arrested and died subsequently at Auschwitz. Guy's mother, Rita, remained in Switzerland with her two children. After the war, she moved to New York City where Guy grew up.

Guy's whole life was colored by her experience of losing everything. It tormented him AND it made him especially sensitive to others' suffering.

When Guy and Toby met, Guy was in growth-oriented psychotherapy with famed gay psychologist Don Clark. Clark was an important influence in both their lives.

in the 1970s, Guy studied calligraphy with an old Jewish wiseman in San Francisco. As an exercise he produced a sampler with a quote from EM Forster. Though the wording is slightly off, it's a wonderful quote. Toby Johnson used Guy's sampler as a frontispiece for his novel Secret Matter

Guy was surely an example of that aristocracy: sensitive, considerate and plucky.

Here's the panel for Guy in the AIDS Quilt. Note the pink triangle and yellow triangle combined to form a Mogen David.

About Esther Bell:

    One evening in 1975, Guy and I had gone to a movie in the area of San Francisco called North Beach. It was cold and dark when we got out. We went down to the corner to wait for a bus. Already at the bus stop was a very old lady. She immediately engaged us in conversation, and then when the bus arrived asked for our help to get her up the steps. She had severe emphysema.
    Over the next year, Guy and I became friends and occasional caretakers of the old lady. And after Guy and I broke up, I took over the job on my own. My oversight of her lated about three years, after which her relatives had her put in a nursing home where she subsequently died, probably at age 90 or so.
     Her name was Esther Bell. She entertained us with stories of her life. As a young woman, she'd been the jewelry and high couture buyer for I. Magnin's Department Store inn downtown San Francisco. She told how she regularly sailed on the Queen Mary steamship from New York to Marseilles to travel to Paris to seek out upscale merchandise. Occasionally she travelled with Mr. Magnin himself.
    Esther also produced a line of her own jewelry, under the name Estabel.
    She gave us some of her pieces (which unfortunately were later lost in a robbery of my home).
    Most of the Estabel line was broaches -- most with a floral theme or insect theme: enamel pansies, for instance, and painted or enameled wasps.
    Meeting Esther Bell was one of the highlights of our lives in San Francisco in those days.