Tracy Joelle Bachman

On January 31, 2024, encircled by her immediate family and a cherished friend, Tracy Joelle Bachman died peacefully due to complications from Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. The eldest of two, Tracy was born to David and Marilyn Bachman on April 4, 1966, in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Growing up with her beyond loved little brother, Darrick, largely in the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, Tracy also attended high school in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where her family had moved while her father worked for Pat Robertson. It was during this time that Tracy met her first girlfriend and was cruelly outed and bullied. Undaunted and resilient, Tracy lived the rest of her life very out and very much in her truth.

With her family back in California and after her father’s untimely death at Christmas in 1985, Tracy quit her first year of college to help support her mother and brother. While she had various jobs during this period of her life, her couple of years at the original Tempo Records store fed her passionate love of music and helped her form friendships and debates over greatest artists, albums, and songs lasting the rest of her life. Tracy and her mother opened an antiques store on Ventura Boulevard called King’s Cross the day of the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. For several years, both in her own store and in other venues, Tracy sold antiques and vintage items to a number of high-profile people, including Catherine Deneuve, Johnny Depp, Courtney Love (accompanied by Kurt Cobain), and Meg Ryan. As her wife of twenty-five and a half years will tell you, Tracy could always accurately predict the value of items while watching Antiques Roadshow.

Despite her talent with antiques, Tracy longed to finish her college education. By this time in her early 30s, she became a freshman at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC). At the start of her new college career, she was working in a Folk-Art store where the owners let her sleep on the floor in between studying full-time and making the Dean’s List every semester. At the end of two years, she was awarded English Department student of the year and transferred to California State University at Northridge (CSUN) and rapidly obtained her B.A. in English. As a CSUN Graduate Student, her accomplishments included serving as the Editor of The Northridge Review, winning the fiction prize, and being named Graduate Student of the Year for the entire university. Her dissertation gave Tracy the opportunity to combine her love of music with her love of literature, as she wrote an ambitious, experimental novel called Maria McKee in which she tells the history of rock and roll from a feminist perspective with its lead character a highly fictionalized version of the titular music icon. CSUN is also where she also began her teaching career. Soon after, she began teaching English back at her alma mater, LAVC, as well as teaching Humanities at LA City College.

Tracy’s love for teaching and for her students knew no bounds. As the beautiful tribute sent out by LAVC’s English Department notes, “Her commitment to fostering a love for language and literature was evident in every interaction she had with her students and colleagues…We will always remember Tracy for her unwavering support, kindness, and the genuine enthusiasm she brought to our department.” At LAVC for twenty years, Tracy served as Puente Coordinator and resurrected the Puente Club, where, as the Club’s Adviser, she coordinated Dolores Huerta’s visit to LAVC. She also taught in LAVC’s Workforce Development Program, helping county workers advance their educational and career advancement goals. The English Department’s tribute to Tracy also included her own words, penned in a self-reflection about her teaching practice—words that best describe Tracy’s love of teaching and learning. Tracy wrote in 2017, “I try to always be there for students as a support system and cheerleader…I look forward to teaching every day. I love it. Teaching is my life.”

In her home life, Tracy was equally nurturing and loving. This was apparent in the enduring partnership with her wife Deborah Harrington, who Tracy supported personally by creating a warm and vibrant household, and supported professionally by encouraging Deborah’s successful pursuit of a doctoral degree. A lifelong caregiver, Tracy spent years taking Deborah’s parents to doctor’s appointments as well as shopping, cooking, and cleaning for them until their deaths. Tracy always found the perfect gift for every family member and friend and the perfect words to help her loved ones through tough times and to help lift them even higher during moments of joy.

It was a life fully lived but cut much too short. Tracy valiantly fought to overcome her disease, surviving intensive radiation and chemotherapy as well as complications arising from treatment, including a near fatal saddle pulmonary embolism. The typical patient with her diagnosis survives 15 months; Tracy lived for 28 months, her grace, humor, kindness, intellect, and compassion fully intact. As only Tracy could, she died as music from the “Funeral Dance Party” playlist she created played and while her family reminisced about all of the hundreds of music heroes Tracy saw live in her lifetime—L7, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Joan Jett... Her heart stopped beating as a song from Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, the Lucinda Williams tour at which she and her wife Deborah attended their first concert together, played, and the song’s chorus a manifestation of both the tremendous sorrow experienced by her loved ones and their solace in knowing that she’s “on the other side.”

In the final two and a half years of her life, Tracy gained great comfort from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. Tracy, with her love of books and love of writing, particularly the very materials of writing, connected what she held so closely in life to what she faced in death. She saw that world unseen, in her words, as a SHEET OF PAPER. For her, the sheet of paper held endless possibility—the possibility she always saw in art, literature, and in the creativity and capacity she cultivated in her students. As in Thich Nhat Hanh’s song:

No coming, no going, no after, no before.

I hold you close to me

I release you to be so free,

Because I am in you and you are in me.

Tracy’s wife, mother, and brother survive her. Tracy leaves behind a cherished sister-in-law, Pamela Kershaw, and niece, Kathy Draper, who were also with her as she passed over. The list of additional family, friends, colleagues, and former students who loved and will greatly miss her is too long to list here. Services for Tracy will be held at 11am, Monday, February 26, 2024, Chapel of the Oaks, Eternal Valley, and she will be interred next to her beloved mother-in-law Patsy in the Garden of the Pioneers.

If you would like to honor Tracy's memory, a good friend has set up an online donation fund--the proceeds will go to cover some of the costs of her memorial and the rest will go to set up a student scholarship in Tracy's name at Los Angeles Valley College. Please visit gofundme.com and search Tracy Bachman to find her page. Also, please consider donating in Tracy's name to City of Hope in memory of her and of the care that they provided to her.

A visitation for Tracy will be held Monday, February 26, 2024 from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM at Eternal Valley Memorial Park Mortuary, 23287 North Sierra Hwy, Newhall, CA 91321. A funeral service will occur Monday, February 26, 2024 from 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM at 2241 - Eternal Valley Memorial Park Mortuary, 23287 North Sierra Hwy, Newhall, CA 91321. A graveside service will occur Monday, February 26, 2024 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM at 2241 - Eternal Valley Memorial Park Mortuary, 23287 North Sierra Hwy, Newhall, CA 91321. Family will host a luncheon and celebration of life at the American Legion Post 507 immediately following the Graveside Service.