Grand Central Music

Darrell Revok

REVOK Darrell Revok, 56 New Orleans, LA – Darrell Revok passed away Saturday, January 8 after a short illness. Born Christopher Baldwin in Albuquerque, New Mexico January 25, 1954, he was the youngest child of the late Brewster Baldwin and of Marie Baldwin. His father worked as a geologist for the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. The family moved to Middlebury, Vermont in 1958, when he took a teaching position at Middlebury College. Chris attended public schools in Middlebury and Cornwall, graduating from Middlebury Union High School in 1972. After spending a year in Germany, he graduated from Middlebury College in 1977 with a B.A. in Philosophy, and was on the running team. He taught for a year in the Shelburne, Vermont schools, then worked as a line cook at restaurants in Burlington and at Stratton Mountain. He won the 1980 Dartmouth Medical School Marathon in 2:28:21 and finished the 1981 Boston Marathon in 256th place. As late as 2004 he shipped his bike to Middlebury each summer and covered sixty miles daily across mountain passes. He moved to New Orleans in 1988 and started at Chez Henri in the Meridien Hotel, then worked at the Palace Cafe and Mr. B’s Bistro. In 1990 he changed his name to Darrell Revok. Until early 2010 he was the banquet chef at Arnaud’s Restaurant, where he worked for over fifteen years. He led a simple, artistic life throughout, never owning a car or real estate or accumulating significant possessions. In New Orleans he ran or biked to work. At the Cornwall house, he moved each summer to the shed annex, where he worked on his boat models and art. He used found objects extensively, and carved or assembled wood to make sculpture, a backgammon board, a three-dimensional chess board, and detailed models of tall ships. The “Cornwall Book of the Birds,” a faux-Egyptian hieroglyphic drawing, described life in Cornwall. He was the ill-fated parson in Jeffrey Morse’s Bride of Windermere, filmed at Shard Villa, Salisbury Vermont in the 1970’s, with a cast drawn from high school friends. In the 1980s he and Jeffrey Morse formed the Aimless Duo, performing their own music and lyrics. He taught himself to play classical guitar. Among his favorite reading was Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. He recited “Mending Wall” and “Blueberries,” to the delight of his young nephew Myles. His father predeceased him in 1992. He is survived by his mother, Marie H. Baldwin of Santa Monica, California; his sister Jean Baldwin McLevedge and husband Brian of East Greenwich, RI; his brother David and wife Paddy of Venice, California, his brother Stephen of Rutland; his nieces Sarah Baldwin of Los Angeles and Samantha Baldwin of Venice, and his nephew Myles McLevedge of East Greenwich. Chris was a great-grandson of William H. Baldwin, president of the Long Island Railroad, Ruth Standish Bowles, co-founder of the National Urban League, and J.R. Moore, who worked for the Matador Ranch in Texas. Services will be private. The family will hold a memorial event this summer in Vermont, and asks that any donations in his memory be made to Bridge House in New Orleans (bridgehouse.org). The family also wishes to express its condolences to Darrell’s many coworkers and friends at Arnaud’s and its gratitude to its owners and executive chef for their kindness