Grant Adamson and I didn’t become friends because we shared a vocation, or lived on the same block, or went to the same high school. We became friends because of shared interests: Malibu history, American history, land use planning and development, and adventure travel.
Grant was the great-grandson of the last sole owners of Malibu when it was still a working ranch 100 years ago. As a new planning commissioner in 1995, I called him up because I wanted to know the subdivision of the Rindge Ranch in greater historical detail. Over the course of the next 15 years, Grant would lead me on hikes and on horseback through the mountains and canyons of Malibu, giving me insights into his great-grandparents and grandparents and parents’ thinking as Malibu evolved from a ranch into the last rural/semi-rural city along the Southern California coast. This was akin to being taken on a tour of Colonial America by the great-grandson of George Washington.
That is how I’ll now always remember Grant: on his horse, heading out from Serra Retreat across Malibu Creek into the back canyons, leading the way, silently, up a steep incline, eventually coming to a meadow near a ridgeline for a lunch of sandwiches and water, then mounting up to head out on a new trail while daylight still burned.
I have lost a good friend, but it’s Malibu who has lost the man who knew and loved Malibu the most. And that is worth all our tears.
Tom Hasse