Hillbarn Theatre co-founder Sam Rolph dies

Born in Hilo, Hawaii, in 1916, Mr. Rolph was the grandson of Elizabeth Napoleon Low, the ward of Sanford Ballard Dole, the governor and only president of the short-lived Republic of Hawaii. His mother, who was too much of a rebel and Bohemian to stay in provincial Hawaii, brought her young sons to the mainland in 1924.

A 1940 graduate of UCLA’s art department, Mr. Rolph was teaching set and costume design at San Mateo Junior College (which later became the College of San Mateo) and working at Peninsula Little Theatre "in a miserable school auditorium on Baldwin Avenue” in San Mateo in 1941. He and another SMJC theater instructor, Robert Brauns of Belmont, began a lifelong collaboration and friendship while working at PLT.

"We were striking a set on a Sunday morning when we heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor on the radio,” Mr. Rolph recalled in an interview five years ago. Six months later, he was in an artillery company ("Thank God, not the infantry!”) headed for England, France and Belgium and the Battle of the Bulge.

He made the crossing from England to Normandy on D-Day plus five. "I celebrated my 29th birthday (June 12) in Southhampton harbor waiting to make the crossing. After the passage, we sat on a barge in my jeep with flak raining down all around us, waiting to go in.”

He earned a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster for individual bravery in Normandy and was on a ship headed for the Pacific when VJ day effectively ended his mobilization. While his fellow GI’s were claiming war souvenirs, Mr. Rolph sought out rare costume design plates wherever he was in Europe.

"I came from the theater when I was drafted, so I bought and sent back costume plates from all over, from New Orleans, London and Paris.” Mr. Rolph donated that extensive costume design collection to the Performing Arts Library and Museum in San Francisco five years ago.

He also sent back set and costume designs for specific productions of the Peninsula Little Theatre that Mr. Brauns was directing. A 1942 article in the Burlingame Advance-Star reported,” Sam Rolph sends designs and construction plans for sets and costumes from an eastern army camp where he is a first lieutenant in field artillery.”

The Palo Alto Times wrote in 1944 that the script for the play "Jealousy” was sent to Mr. Rolph when he was in England and it made the journey to France with him before he could send it back his sketches. "You should see the sets I dream up while I’m on guard,” he was quoted as saying.

Mr. Rolph came back to San Mateo to teach again at SMJC which was now located in wartime Quonset huts at Peninsula Avenue and Humboldt Street in San Mateo, the current site of the Woodlake Apartments.

It was during this postwar period, that Mr. Rolph and Mr. Brauns gave new life to a summer theater company, Hillbarn, which had grown out of PLT while Mr. Rolph was overseas. He and Mr. Brauns saw Hillbarn through several iterations, starting with an actual "barn on a hill” on what is now Hillbarn Court off 43rd Avenue in San Mateo. Hillbarn moved briefly to a chapel on the Borel Estate on El Camino Real in San Mateo and then to the just-opened Carlmont Shopping Center in Belmont in 1961 before fundraising allowed the construction of its current home on East Hillsdale Boulevard in Foster City in 1968.

Until his retirement in 1978, Mr. Rolph taught set design at CSM, and Hillbarn was his laboratory. He and Mr. Brauns retired from Hillbarn in 1981.

Mr. Rolph is survived by his sister, Sally Wedding of Portland, Ore.; his brother, Donald Rolph of Rio Vista; his friend and partner of nearly 60 years, Vince Roman of Belmont; and four nieces and nephews.

Plans for a memorial service are pending, but the family suggests donations to Hillbarn Theatre and Conservatory, 1285 E. Hillsdale Blvd., Foster City 94404.