Harold and the Acid Sea of Reality

Born in Elmhurst, a suburb of Chicago, Doug was educated at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. In 1955 he built his first house in Santa Monica Canyon, California, and in the following years his wife gave birth to three marvelous daughters. By January of 1958 he became the first permanent architect doing business solely in Malibu. In 1966 he moved his family into a new Malibu architect's dream home overlooking Surfrider Beach. Five years later it burned to the ground and it took him two more years to build a more fire-resistant house over the same foundations. The new house remains noted in Gebhardt and Winter's, Los Angeles Guide to Architecture. In 1964 Doug did a contemporary house for Jack Hogan later to be sold to Muriel Kessler and her husband, who lived in it for 47 years before selling it to Chris and Susanna Caparro. Chris noted the quality of the house and alerted the Cultural Heritage Commission of the City of Los Angeles. It was quickly selected in the Modern Style and classified as a Cultural Historical Monument No. 1152. In June of 2022 it was placed on the National Register of Historical Places by the United States Department of the Interior. Doug has spent most of his career doing new houses and additions in Malibu and local areas, but has also designed and built single jobs in Kauai, Greece, Denver, Fallbrook, Barstow, Long Beach, New York and eight projects in Santa Barbara. In 1980 he was divorced from his first wife and for many years was married to Marge Lewi-Rucker who had four children of her own. All are grown up along with Doug's three and are passionately invested in their own lives. Marge is deceased and Doug now lives content in a small house of his own design on a landscaped acre of property in the mountains above Malibu, Retired from architecture, he brings a special passion to writing and photographic digital art.