Tony Michael Hans Farrenkopf

Tony Farrenkopf was born in Germany in 1940. He survived the war by moving to the countryside with his mother, though their apartment in Hannover was bombed. He lost two fingers in 1944 in a train incident with German soldiers. Following the war, he attended an all-boys school, getting into mischief at every turn, eventually leaving school at age 17 to join the merchant marine and sail around the world on cargo ships. While in port he led a bohemian lifestyle with a monkey on his shoulder and a bottle of red in his hand, painting on the streets of Paris for loose change, and running with the bulls in Pamplona. After Army service in Europe he moved to San Francisco in 1967 and joined the revolution as a scholar. There he met his wife of 50 years, a nurse, Helen Brady, and they moved to Massachusetts. Tony received his BS in Psychology and Philosophy at San Francisco State, and his PhD in Psychology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 1979 he and his young family moved to Portland, OR where he opened a private practice specializing in psychotherapy, Ethics, disaster debriefing, and sports psychology. In his spare time he coached Bridget’s soccer team, drank rum on the beaches in Hawaii, played the harmonica, danced to Chuck Berry, and wrote stories. He spoke German, French, English, and a smattering of everything else; he considered himself a Faustian; and he loved this life.

He is remembered with love by his daughters, Marieka Farrenkopf (Portland) and Bridget Habib (Paris, France); his sons-in-law, Matthew Bihn and Mark Habib; his four grandsons, Eli & Kellen (Portland), and Kadin & Xavier (Paris); and his sisters, Dagmar and Helga (Germany). His lovely wife, Helen, died in 2020.