Timothy Charles Eagan

Timothy Charles Eagan passed on August 25, 2025. He was born May 31, 1944 to Charles and Beatrice Eagan as a fourth-generation San Franciscan.

He is survived by his loving wife, Jane, daughter Natalie, brother Dennis and sister Kathleen, his nieces and nephews, and a large circle of good-hearted friends and relatives.

Though California had always been his home, he attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he studied Government and, for good or ill, received much of his social education at the AD bar (a venue later immortalized in the movie Animal House).

The Government major carried him to Hastings College of the Law and to a brief career of practicing law, most notably as a Deputy District Attorney in and around San Jose, California. But he was never fully comfortable on that life path. A series of large life decisions soon led him to find success as a cartoonist, speaker, writer, and briefly as a politician.

His editorial cartoons, notably Deep Cover, reflected a life-long fascination with politics, and opened the door to both local and national notoriety. His long- running comic strip Subconscious Comics, conversely, showed a similar preoccupation with fantasy and the sometimes strange environments found in human nature.

His skills with the spoken word, in addition to their usefulness in the courtroom, were instrumental in finding air time for his comedy pieces on NPR’s All Things Considered, and producing bits for the NFCB-award-winning Surf City Live!, and KUSP’s 15-Minute Comedy Hour.

His quixotic run for the office of Santa Cruz County District Attorney in 1978 ended in a rout, but his campaign literature was, hands down, the best in the race. Art Danner (at the time, a political newcomer) ended up serving as DA for twenty more years.

He built his dream home in Bonny Doon, a small mountain community outside of Santa Cruz. He was responsible for every step of the the design, construction, and finishing of the project, and he pointed to it as the most broadly satisfying accomplishment of his life. He lived there with his family for thirty-seven years.

A Memorial Service will be held at Benito and Azzaro on October 4 at One PM Donations in his memory may be made to the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, or any organization dedicated to preserving wilderness on Earth.