MacNichol appears in the 1945-46 city directory for San Francisco, so he came west sometime after the start of World War II. His address is given as 478 Union Street, his occupation as literary consultant. His business listing also included someone named Susan E. MacNichol, which may mean that he married again. No later than 1948, he opened Pencraft College at 2255 Lombard Street, where he taught writing, and was a founding member of the Seven Arts League, which was supposed to encourage the fine arts in San Francisco. The League didn’t seem to have made much of a dent—there’s no discussion of it in the San Francisco Chronicle and no record of it in the California State Library History Room.
If he had been married to someone named Susan, that ended by the late 1940s, for in 1949 he married Polly Lamb, another member of the Fortean Society. That relationship, too, ended a few years later, for in 1953, he married Marie A. Wright (it was her second marriage) in San Francisco. He was sixty five; she was forty two. The marriage was recorded in San Francisco, but it seems that his connection to the city was dying.
He did give a series of lectures on writing at the University of San Francisco in 1954, but he last appeared in the city directory in 1951, and then he was listed as a writer (not the head of Pencraft College) and still married to Polly Lamb. A few years later, he was mostly remembered as publisher of the San Lorenzo Village Sun, a newspaper that served the planned community of San Leandro Village, which suggests that he may have been living there, or in Santa Cruz. I can find no record of this publication at the California State Library or Hayward Area Historical Society. At any rate, the paper could not have lasted very long—like most of the many projects MacNichol started and then abandoned.
On Sunday June 26, the MacNichols were on a bus in Santa Cruz, California, crossing the railroad tracks at Younglove Avenue and Seaside Street. A slow moving train crashed into the bus. Kenneth’s chest was crushed, puncturing his lungs. “If he had been 10 years younger he probably would have recovered,” a medical spokesman said. But he died on Wednesday morning. Marie suffered a fractured skull, but was expected to make a full recovery. I’m not sure what happened to her, but presumably she did survive because I have been unable to find a death certificate for Marie MacNichol from the summer of 1955.
If he had been married to someone named Susan, that ended by the late 1940s, for in 1949 he married Polly Lamb, another member of the Fortean Society. That relationship, too, ended a few years later, for in 1953, he married Marie A. Wright (it was her second marriage) in San Francisco. He was sixty five; she was forty two. The marriage was recorded in San Francisco, but it seems that his connection to the city was dying.
He did give a series of lectures on writing at the University of San Francisco in 1954, but he last appeared in the city directory in 1951, and then he was listed as a writer (not the head of Pencraft College) and still married to Polly Lamb. A few years later, he was mostly remembered as publisher of the San Lorenzo Village Sun, a newspaper that served the planned community of San Leandro Village, which suggests that he may have been living there, or in Santa Cruz. I can find no record of this publication at the California State Library or Hayward Area Historical Society. At any rate, the paper could not have lasted very long—like most of the many projects MacNichol started and then abandoned.
On Sunday June 26, the MacNichols were on a bus in Santa Cruz, California, crossing the railroad tracks at Younglove Avenue and Seaside Street. A slow moving train crashed into the bus. Kenneth’s chest was crushed, puncturing his lungs. “If he had been 10 years younger he probably would have recovered,” a medical spokesman said. But he died on Wednesday morning. Marie suffered a fractured skull, but was expected to make a full recovery. I’m not sure what happened to her, but presumably she did survive because I have been unable to find a death certificate for Marie MacNichol from the summer of 1955.
