Faces of Falcons Landing, Part III: Living His Own Words

Pride makes people do funny things. Doting parents stuff wallets or purses with family photos, readying themselves to boast at a moments notice. Workers filled with a sense of a job well done sport polo shirts bearing their employer’s logo. Meanwhile, car owners, perhaps the proudest of all, nearly scrub the paint off their roadsters until they beam like a dying star.

So here we have 84-year-old John Scharfen. He and wife Nancy have lived at Falcons Landing for seven years. They like their home. They like their community. (It does have an indoor pool and a workshop.) And they especially like their neighbors--particularly other former Marine couples.

With all that to like, how did proud-as-can-be Scharfen show love for his little neck of the woods? He wrote a book about it.

Called “On Falcons’ Wings: An Intrepid Generation,” Scharfen’s 314-page book is a personal tour of some of Falcons Landing’s most heroic who fought in Europe and Asian, and some of its most creative who turned the community into an art colony for the senior set. One former resident appeared in 24 movies, according to the book. One wrote musicals. Still another resident Scharfen featured is renowned for his painstakingly intricate dioramas. Scharfen, himself, is a woodcarver.

“It isn’t the buildings. It isn’t the food at Falcons Landing, which is very, very good. And it isn’t the activities,” he said. “But it’s the people. That’s what prompted me to write the book.”

Scharfen, who was born in Duluth, Minn., and raised in San Francisco, enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1943 at age 17. Two years later, he was commissioned an officer and spent the remainder of World War II in China.

After the war, he studied industrial psychology at Stanford University, where he also played varsity basketball. Then, in 1951, he was called back to active duty and served as a company commander during the Korean War.

Scharfen eventually worked his way up the chain of command in the Marines, and made stops in Vietnam, Germany, Rome and Beirut.

During this time, he started to write. Considering his occupation, it’s not surprising that much of his early work was writing magazine articles on military strategy and policy. He’s been published at least 50 times.

And “On Falcons’ Wings” is not even his first foray into book writing. He penned another book on using economics as a tool in achieving strategic objectives.

Still, since it’s about home, “On Falcons’ Wings” is near and gear to Scharfen. Regarding its subjects, Scharfen is hard-pressed to name a favorite, but there are some that stick out.

There’s the story of a Bernard “Mick” Trainor, a retired Marine general turned New York Times correspondent. Another story, he points out, is of Mollie Van Harlingen, who wrote 24 musical plays for Falcons Landing’s theater group over nine years, and who recently died. “I don’t know what Falcons Landing will do without her,” Scharfen said.

And let us not forget the story of the pilot who landed his plane backwards.

“He was all shot up, and he didn’t know how he was going to land his aircraft,” Scharfen recalled of this mini-hair-razing-adventure in Germany.

Since the pilot had no brakes, as Scharfen recounts, he dipped one wing onto the runway to slow the plane, as was the practice in such circumstances. However, once it touched ground, the plane spun and skidded backwards for what seemed like an eternity. It finally came to rest, but only inches from the edge of a cliff that claimed scores of other wayward pilots.

“So there are some interesting stories in there,” Scharfen concluded.

Perhaps, for his next book, he should tackle the subject of understatements of the century.