Rick Lovin was easily spotted in a crowd (like the dance floor at Club Universe in San Francisco) by the prominent Batman symbol tattooed on his upper left arm. The tattoo was emblematic of his endearing, childlike love of all things Batman.

He also loved cats, comic books, Star Wars, fantasy and science fiction novels, Star Trek, The Lion King (his favorite movie), cartoons (especially the Powerpuff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Tom and Jerry), and candy. Rick went a little crazy every year after Halloween, stocking up on fun-sized candy to share at his office.

Rick Lovin was born Richard Ford in Parma, Ohio. He also sometimes used his mother’s maiden Cherokee name, Rainwater. He grew up in Maryville, Tennessee, went to high school in Newport, Tennessee, and attended DeVry University in Atlanta. He later lived in Studio City, California (where he waited at a McCormick & Schmick’s restaurant and made an unsuccessful stab at writing for TV), Knoxville, and San Francisco, where he worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Friends described him as “animated” — and sometimes he literally displayed the attributes of a cartoon character, with a gamut of goofy expressions centered around his larger-than-life blue eyes. He did a mean Mojo Jojo imitation.

Steven Saylor’s novel A Mist of Prophecies was dedicated to Rick.

Rick was 5'7", hairy-chested and stocky, sometimes chunky and sometimes buffed. He had a gentle nature and a love of the underdog; as a boy he once rescued a cat from a pack of farm dogs. He spoke of a troubled childhood and was estranged from his parents and sister. When his guard was down, he revealed a worrisome degree of low self-worth and social discomfort. He could be stubborn and secretive to the point of deception, but always out of fear and insecurity, never maliciousness. Speed use and an HIV diagnosis undid the more stable life he had begun to create for himself in San Francisco. In the last years of his life he lived in residential hotels and hung out during the day at Borders Books.

Rick died due to pneumocystis pneumonia at St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco on Thanksgiving Day, 2008.

An obituary, condensed from this page, appeared in the Bay Area Reporter on December 25, 2008.

If you have any contact information for his family, or have thoughts to share about Rick, please contact Steven Saylor.