San Francisco Chronicle - November 13, 2005
Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

The 72-year-old Englishman -- a gardener, singer, gambler and bon vivant -- died of lung cancer on Oct. 29. A memorial will be held today in his favorite place, the garden of his Nob Hill home.

"He was one of the gems," said Mike Smith, executive director of the AIDS Emergency Fund. "He was one of our most active and most visible volunteers."

The organization's Every Penny Counts campaign, which generates more than $100,000 a year, can be traced to Mr. Slocombe.

"It was his idea," said London-born Jeannie Engelhart.

She recalled the day that Mr. Slocombe started talking about how people "back home in England" dealt with the troubles of those they cared about.

"He said they would put a jar on the bar with a little notice telling everyone what's going on," Engelhart said. "And the whole neighborhood would put change in the jar."

In 1987, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, it seemed worth trying. A bartender friend, Fred Skau, stuck a mayonnaise jar on the counter of his Polk Street bar. Eighteen years later, the Pennies Project has raised more than $2 million from San Francisco establishments and Bay Area schools.

Every Thursday, in the South of Market office of the AIDS Emergency Fund, Mr. Slocombe and Engelhart would meet to count and bag coins.

"They treated it like it was Fort Knox," said Jeffrey Johnson, the organization's controller and business manager.

At lunchtime, they'd often take the streetcar to Fisherman's Wharf to eat crab at Pompeii's Grotto.

"He was just a big hoot," Johnson said. "There was a little bit of that starchy Brit in him, but he was just a big old teddy bear."

Mr. Slocombe was born in Bristol, England, in 1933 and joined the Royal Air Force when he was 18. After being discharged three years later, he moved to Canada before settling in San Francisco in 1965.

For the next 30 years, he worked as a waiter at the World Trade Club in San Francisco's Ferry Building before retiring in 1995.

Six years earlier, Mr. Slocombe had started the Pine Street Fair, an annual sidewalk sale of items he'd stash in his basement -- one year making $18,000.

"Once he sold a truckload of old porn tapes and collected $1,000," Smith said.

Mr. Slocombe's friends described him as generous, gentlemanly and deeply attached to his homeland.

"We were friends, actually, because I was British," Engelhart said. "We met in a bar. I was speaking to someone, and he came up and said, 'What part of the country are you from?' At the time I was shooting pool. It was the closest pool table to where I lived, in the '70s, and I just sat down one day and said, 'Oh, there aren't any women in here, just men.' "

She said Mr. Slocombe was "British through and through, very fond of England and the queen," and partial to fish and chips.

He loved to garden, Smith said, but hated cut flowers because he didn't like the idea of killing them. He also relished listening to show tunes and singing in karaoke bars -- "I Am What I Am" was a frequent choice.

HIV-positive since the 1980s, Mr. Slocombe was proud of being his doctor's oldest living AIDS patient, said Engelhart, who accompanied her ailing friend to Australia in 1993 to say goodbye to relatives. However, a new generation of drugs would keep him going 12 more years.

"It was fun to be around David," said neighbor Marie Brewer, who delighted her friend after one trip to London by bringing back some Vera Lynn albums he'd requested.

She added that he also enjoyed gambling.

"If he wanted exercise, he'd go to Reno and play the one-armed bandits," Brewer said.

Mr. Slocombe was preceded in death in 1994 by his partner of many years, Billy Macedo, who had AIDS. He is survived by his sister, Pat Vincent of Fremantle, Australia, and numerous relatives in that country and England.

A memorial garden party will take place at his home at 1174A Pine St. in San Francisco from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. today. Donations in his memory can be sent to the AIDS Emergency Fund. For more information, see www.aidsemergencyfund.org.

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