Rex Hutchens
Photo from Mendicino High School Yearbook Class of 1961 Classmates.com
1942- 2022
The Tucson Scottish Rite Temple bears testimony to the industry of Rex Hutchens. Like so much in the Ancient and Accepted Right, Rex left his mark here. When Rex finally succumbed to cancer on December 17, 2022, at age 80, the Tucson Scottish Rite Temple was the obvious place to host his memorial.
Photo courtesy of Moria Zimbiki
R
ex Hutchens was worldly. Naturally curious, restless even. Across the Pacific, out from Mendocino Headlands State Park in Northern California, where the whales broke the surface, the horizon must have shone like a bow at the edge of the world. He wanted to go through it. He wanted to plant both feet and shoot forth like an arrow. He graduated Mendocino High School in 1961, one of eighteen seniors. The yearbook appends his entry with allusions to his curiosity and love of argument: “class officer,” “science club,” “drama,” and “debate.” Eying that horizon, no doubt, he took opportunity knight templar
by Ben Williams to go somewhere – anywhere – and enlisted. After all, Fort Bragg was only ten miles away. His keen mind was already salient: They sent him to teach at the Army Information School in Oklahoma. Ever the student, he took night classes too. Once discharged, he went farther, where the Arabian Sea meets the Gulf of Oman, teaching mathematics and science at the American School in Karachi, Pakistan, and then inland, to the foothills of the Hindu Kush, at the American School in Kabul, Afghanistan. Here, at the reaches of the Near East, his love of mysticism kindled. The magic of the alphabet must have appeared 11